I'm not an austere person.

If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.

Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.

The idea that because you're born in Haiti you could die having a child. The idea that because you're born in you know Malawi your children may go to bed hungry. We want to take some of the chance out of that.

You can't have public health without working with the public sector. You can't have public education without working with the public sector in education.

I'm one of six kids, and the eight of us lived for over a decade in either a bus or a boat.

...In a world riven by inequity, medicine could be viewed as social justice work.