ONE BY ONE BY ONE

A close-up, personal look back at humanitarian efforts through the eyes of a doctor who has worked in Haiti and other areas of the world in desperate need of medical care.

Berkowitz, a former Harvard Medical School professor and the founding director of Global Health at Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, writes movingly of his days as a young neurologist facing the challenges of saving one Haitian’s life in a country where the vast majority of citizens lack basic medical care. “More than half the population lives on less than two dollars a day, and about a quarter on less than one dollar a day,” he writes. “So patients go to the closest doctor they can find.” When 23-year-old Janel arrived with an extraordinarily large brain tumor, the author hoped for a positive outcome by way of surgery in the U.S. With a novelist’s touch for bringing to life people and places, he tells of the complexities of arranging Janel’s treatment—raising money, getting Janel a passport, finding the surgeon and the hospital—and of the complications that ensued, including surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, and rehabilitation. During this learning experience, the young Berkowitz discovered a significant lesson of humanitarian work: that success and failure are not clear-cut. Also vital, he realized, is the importance of remembering the individuality of the patients who make up the statistics of public health. As the Haitian proverb goes, “every person is a person”—“tout moun se moun” in Creole Haitian, a language that appears frequently in the narrative (an English translation follows each instance), which adds unique flavor to the prose. Recalled conversations and text messages abound, giving the text a refreshing immediacy and allowing the personality of each of Berkowitz’s many colleagues to emerge. The author also charmingly recalls his interactions with Partners in Health founder Paul Farmer, a “rock star” in the arena of global health.

A poignant and unsentimental account by a dedicated doctor doing palpable good.