2015: The Year in Quotes

It’s been a busy year, and Partners In Health has had many stories to tell. We helped quash the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, treated multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in Russia, made house calls in Mexico and Malawi, and trained the next generation of clinicians in Haiti and Rwanda. Here’s a snapshot of some of the year's best, and most trying, moments.

“I’ll clean house, chop wood, haul coal if I have to.”
Betty J. John, a PIH community health representative in the Navajo Nation  

“When you see people dying, you want to do everything you can.”
Dr. Louise C. Ivers, PIH’s senior health and policy adviser, on why she pressed for an ambitious, and controversial, cholera vaccine program in Haiti 

“It’s the right thing to do.”
Karin Huster, on why she decided to volunteer for PIH as a nurse in an Ebola Treatment Unit in Sierra Leone   

“In the 30 years that I've been involved in the provision of health care services to the poor and marginalized, I can think of no more dramatic example of a turnaround than that achieved in Rwanda.”
PIH Co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer 

“The truth is that in most of the places that we work, we are either the first doctors or the first functional doctors.”
Dr. Hugo Flores, PIH’s executive director in Mexico  

“I asked them, ‘Do you believe in God?’ One said, ‘I do believe in God. I just believe that Satan is stronger.' And I had to agree. I don’t know how anyone can deserve this—war and then Ebola, torture on torture.”
Dr. Luanne Freer, a PIH volunteer recalling a conversation with Sierra Leonean colleagues working with her in an Ebola Treatment Unit

“The guarantee I can give you is that we're going to look for help for you so that we can keep these babies alive.”
Dr. Christophe Milien, PIH’s director of obstetrics and gynecology at University Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti, speaking to his patient who was pregnant with triplets, two of whom were conjoined at the abdomen

“I’m basically leaving the best job in the world for the best job in the world.”
Devin Platt, who quit his position as a nurse in Oregon to work for PIH at a hospital in Sierra Leone

“The other students could not believe that people from a rural part of Liberia were going to sit the nursing exam.”
Malcom Smith, one of the first public university students in decades to earn a nursing license in Liberia, who was tutored by PIH clinicians  

“I only did what I had to do—fight as much as I could for the life of a child.”
Dr. Azucena Espinosa, a PIH social service physician working in Chiapas, Mexico, who helped a boy get treatment for and overcome a severe case of Hodgkin Lymphoma 

Musa Sillah, a nurse who volunteered for PIH in Sierra Leone, puts on personal protective equipment before entering the Maforki Ebola Treatment Unit. Photo by Rebecca E. Rollins/Partners In Health

“My coworker is stunned. I say, ‘She’s dead.’ But it doesn't register. ‘No, I have to change her diaper,’ he says.”
Musa Sillah, a nurse who volunteered for PIH in an Ebola Treatment Unit in Sierra Leone, on a conversation he had with a coworker following a young patient’s death

“My motto is 'whatever it takes.' I have learned from Partners In Health to do whatever it takes in order to save lives and restore health.”
Cyprien Safari, PIH’s medical stock coordinator in Rwanda 

“She was like a guardian angel. She was always by my side.”
Dayana,* a mother living with HIV in Peru, referring to her PIH-affiliated peer sponsor

“It’s been so horrible to hear that every single family has one child that has died. They’ll say, ‘He died of fever when he was born.’”
Dr. Karla Sanchez, a PIH social service physician working in Chiapas, Mexico 

"We need hundreds of these houses, not one, and that's part of the plan. We're writing the manual of operation, the recipe, and will help the Ministry of Health duplicate it and scale up."
Jerome Galea, PIH’s deputy director in Peru, on establishing the first safe house in Lima for women living with schizophrenia 

“Last year, 9 million people became sick with TB. That's more than the entire population of New York City falling ill with a disease that we have largely been able to cure since 1947.”
Dr. Salmaan Keshavjee, PIH’s senior TB specialist and director of Harvard Medical School's Center for Global Health Delivery-Dubai

“The Haitian society was hit from the heart. We had to do something. Everyone was afraid of seeing the burden of mental health increase along the way.”
Père Eddy Eustache, PIH’s director of the mental health program in Haiti, on the country's massive 2010 earthquake   

“I sat for an hour with them, talking about TB and how they could protect themselves. No one had explained it to them. They were very grateful, because they lived in a remote hillside, and no one else came to see them.”
Dr. Leonid Lecca, PIH's executive director in Peru 

Transportation by horse or donkey, perhaps not even possible for a patient like Tebello, would cost the equivalent of $20-$30 U.S. Instead, men from the village took turns carrying her over the rugged hillsides.
Merida Carmona, PIH's Lesotho program associate, about a mother whom PIH helped get to a hospital, where she delivered her son by cesarean section

“I came to understand that if a patient did not want to undergo treatment, it was society’s problem—our problem. I learned to investigate not only patients’ medical conditions, but also their personal issues that could influence their recovery.”
Nataliya Zemlyanaya, PIH’s program manager in Tomsk, Russia

“A typical day starts at 7:30 a.m., when I arrive at the clinic with our team of two nurses and a pharmacy technician. Dozens of patients will be waiting for us, with some having walked from as far as 20 kilometers away.”
Joe Lusaka, PIH’s clinical officer in Malawi, who led an emergency response team during devastating floods in February 

“The first time I met him, I didn’t know 'Farmer' was his real surname. We spent our time planting flowers and digging a fish pond at the health center. After a couple of months, we had an amazing garden around the health center. It became a relaxing place for patients, staff, and local community members, and a favorite area for wedding photos. I thought he was an actual farmer.”
Anatole Manzi, PIH’s director of training, on meeting Dr. Paul Farmer  

“There were days when I would wake up on a horrible mattress, under a mosquito net, and say, ‘What am I doing here?’ But it wasn’t regret. It was just surreal sometimes to wake up in the middle of a forest, in a teeny house, with bucket showers and no Internet, and a terrible phone shared by the entire community. “Even though there was a lot of work, it was by far the best experience of my medical training.”
Dr. Eduardo "Lalo" Peters, a PIH social service physician working in Chiapas, Mexico.