With exceptional empathy and care, Paul Farmer takes us through his experience with that health crisis and the difficult history that made those populations particularly vulnerable ... To really remedy what has happened to West Africa will not be cured by training more nurses or, as he does so well, telling the stories of Ebola survivors.
Instead of a disease thriller or a straight memoir, Farmer’s book is structured almost like an experimental novel, or a time-twisting prestige television drama. The chronology loops back on itself multiple times ... Farmer begins the final section of Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds with a quote apparently uttered by Louis Pasteur on his deathbed: 'Le microbe n’est rien, le terrain est tout.' The microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything. If indeed Pasteur said the line, the reference to “the terrain” was an allusion to the 'terrain' of the human body, and to the immune system in particular. But Farmer invokes it to point to a broader landscape, more political than biological: the violent conflict and material inequalities that inevitably play a role in determining whether a virus destroys a human life, or leaves it relatively unscathed. 'This was not,' Farmer writes, 'a history of inevitable mortality that resulted from ancient evolutionary forces. … It was the contingent history of a population made vulnerable.' For that terrain — and the ravages of history that created it — Farmer has given us an invaluable map.
Anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer, based at Harvard Medical School, turns [the common view] of Ebola on its head in his eye-opening, densely detailed, and riveting Fevers, Feuds and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History ... The truth, as Farmer makes crystal clear, often with an incandescent anger that shines through even his measured words, is much different. Yes, the disease — just like coronaviruses — is spread in part through caregiving. But the base fact is this: Ebola swept through these nations in a catastrophic way more because of a history of inequality than because of viral biology ... When it comes to Ebola in 2014, Fevers, Feuds and Diamonds is no armchair account ... Only Paul Farmer, I think, in his ability to write so knowledgeably and with such love and hope for all of humanity, could coax me to read 526 pages of text about a viral outbreak during a viral pandemic. (Confession: I only skimmed the nearly-100 extra pages of footnotes in the back.) Farmer is modest in print, but his story (conveyed also in his previous books) is compelling. He's worked tirelessly for decades in places like Haiti and Rwanda to aid crisis recovery and build strong public-health networks.From Farmer we learn that the world needs not only a COVID vaccine, but something much more: a rejection of global racial inequalities and an embrace of investing seriously in the care of all people.
The narrative is supplemented by a deep exploration of the war-torn, strife-filled and tragic history of the region, which the Western world robbed of millions of men, women and children during the centuries of the slave trade — and continues exploiting for its diamonds, palm oil and rubber ... The result is a 500-page cry of anger at the centuries of shocking abuse and the hypocrisy of emerging democracies in the United States, Britain and France that valued liberté, egalité and fraternité, except when it came to enslaved Blacks — and that, after the independence movement of the 1950s and 1960s, did next to nothing to aid their former colonies when civil war left thousands dead and millions more displaced.
Farmer’s writing can be distressing with nightmarish scenes involving repulsive sights and smells ... A challenging, consequential, and tragically timely book about the forces that sculpt epidemics and the necessity of compassion and altruism in caring for their victims.
Blending medical history and anthropology, this book brings newfound awareness to the interconnectedness of West Africa, Europe, and the United States throughout the centuries as each region navigates global health challenges, and shows how the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa continues to affect the social underpinnings of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea today ... Throughout, readers are immersed in Farmer’s own recollections of his time working in West Africa and will be moved by the interwoven recollections of Ebola survivors along with the stories of those who died from the disease ... Recommended to all interested in a moving, impassioned overview of the economic and social forces of colonialism and racism that have directly impacted public health historically, during the 2014 Ebola epidemic, and today, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
...bold, humane and rigorously researched ... Farmer’s portraits of survivors are moving ... Anyone who comes to this book with an open mind will find it hard to dispute his premise.
...a fascinating new book from Paul Farmer, the physician and Partners in Health co-founder ... He tells the stories of Ibrahim Kamara and Yabom Koroma, two Sierra Leoneans who lost family members to Ebola. Their testimonies are heartbreaking, and Farmer writes about their myriad losses with elegance and sensitivity ... bleak reading, to be sure, but it's also endlessly informative ... Farmer's book would be valuable reading at any time, but it's even more so in our pandemic times. It's a stunning, sobering book that feels not just important, but actually necessary.
... incisive and deeply informed ... Farmer’s detailed synthesis of the history behind the crisis enlightens, but poignant profiles of victims, survivors, and physicians, including Dr. Humarr Khan, Sierra Leone’s 'Ebola czar' who died from the illness, are the book’s greatest strength. This fierce and finely wrought chronicle offers essential perspective on fighting epidemics.
