The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems.

The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.

With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others- or, in a word, partnership.

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.

I've been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, 'it would be a good idea,' to quote Gandhi.

Since I do not believe that there should be different recommendations for people living in the Bronx and people living in Manhattan, I am uncomfortable making different recommendations for my patients in Boston and in Haiti.

Haiti was founderd by a righteous revolution in 1804 and became the first black republic. It was the first country to break the chains of slavery, the first to force Emperor Napoleon to retreat, and the only to aid Simón Bolívar in his struggle to liberate the indigenous people and slaves of Latin America from their colonial oppressors.