The Doctor Who Built a Hospital Where the World Saw Nothing Worth Saving

When Dr. Paul Farmer first walked through Cange, Haiti, in the mid-1980s, he found a community where mothers watched their children die from diseases that cost pennies to treat. Tuberculosis. Dysentery. Infections that would never kill a child in Boston.

Most aid organizations offered statistics and apologies. Farmer offered something radically different. He built a clinic, then a hospital, then an entire healthcare network — Partners in Health — that now serves millions across twelve countries. His operating principle was devastatingly simple: poor people deserve the same quality of medicine as rich people.

Colleagues told him it wasn't cost-effective. Economists argued resources should go elsewhere. Farmer's response became famous: "The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world."

That is the heartbeat of Psalm 72. The psalmist envisions a king unlike any the ancient world had seen — one who doesn't merely tolerate the poor but actively rescues them. "He will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help." Under this reign, the blood of the oppressed is "precious in his sight."

Every earthly healer eventually runs out of strength. But the King this psalm anticipates never does. He endures as long as the sun, and under His rule, righteousness flourishes like rain on mown grass — especially for those the world has written off.