Again, conventional Catholicism does not much appeal to me.

We've taken on the major health problems of the poorest - tuberculosis, maternal mortality, AIDS, malaria - in four countries. We've scored some victories in the sense that we've cured or treated thousands and changed the discourse about what is possible.

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

But as for activism, my parents did what they could, given the constraints, but were never involved in the causes I think of when I think of activists.

If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?

For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.

Some people talk about Haiti as being the graveyard of development projects.