Bending the Arc

In 1983, a couple of young volunteers at a clinic in Haiti learned that people were dying of curable diseases only because they were not being treated. This awareness sparked Paul Farmer, then 23, and Ophelia Dahl, then 18, to dedicate themselves to a lifetime of providing healthcare to the world’s most impoverished people. Bending the Arc charts the inspiring story of their pioneering organization, Partners in Health, from its origins in Haiti to Peru, Rwanda and beyond, where its workers combatted not only deadly infectious diseases but also a bias on the part of the world health establishment against spending money to aid the world’s most dispossessed. Bending the Arc testifies to the possibility of a few committed individuals bringing change to a global problem that seemed utterly intractable, making a powerful argument along the way that health care is basic human right.