What responsibilities do individuals in wealthier nations have toward people in poor countries? How has reading about Paul Farmer’s work in Mountains Beyond Mountains impacted ideas about responsibility or obligations toward people who are poorer than you are?

As he describes his humanitarian work in Mountains Beyond Mountains, Paul Farmer emphasizes the importance of attending to the people who contribute to the creation of wealth through their labor but reap relatively little benefit. One element of responsibility lies in the over-developed countries’ quest for resources to support their industrial growth; the human and environmental costs of the globalized economy weigh most heavily on those who are already disadvantaged.
While imbalances may seem to be most extreme between countries, inequality is also pronounced within a given country. As a physician and an anthropologist, Farmer is committed to reducing the size of that gap. Such efforts require looking at a society and economy as interlocking systems. Understanding health as the ability to acquire basic necessities and not just the absence of disease is part of such a systemic worldview.
Numerous nonprofit organizations are dedicated to encouraging individuals to make contributions relative to their own status, such as through service or contributions of time, even when they cannot make a financial contribution. Farmer established Partners in Health, for example, as a nonprofit that could both coordinate with state-level and international organizations and operate more efficiently on independent projects.