This has been a difficult couple of years. We have lost many great leaders and exemplary people. Today, I learned that Dr. Paul Farmer has passed away at the age of 62 while in Rwanda. Dr. Farmer founded Partners in Health (PIH) and was instrumental in bringing to light many of the things we take for granted in global health today. He was my classmate at HMS, but I never saw him as he was always working. I know he was a big supporter of OpenMRS and with his books and speaking he raised awareness and directed attention to problems that he was addressing through his own work. For all the work that PIH does and we do together, we can be grateful to Paul.
I know this will come as a shock to many people, particularly those in the PIH family that knew him. I am so sorry for their (and our) loss. The world shines a bit dimmer today.
Paul Farmer was a friend and supporter of OpenMRS from the start. He helped along with way and convinced many to embrace it. In the very early days (2007?), of OpenMRS, he wanted to distribute OpenMRS CDs at the International AIDS Conference so everyone would have better health care (and data) systems. OpenMRS wasn’t ready to be “shrink wrapped” then, but hopefully we are all inspired to build easily installed and configurable systems to save lives now.