Fevers, Feuds, And Diamonds Summary

Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds Dr. Paul Farmer’s 2020 novel, Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds is an expertly told memoir of the Ebola outbreak that devastated West Africa from 2013 to 2016. He tells the stories of Ebola patients and the medical providers, himself included, who experienced this disease firsthand while also discussing the history of the region and how it ultimately led to the outbreak. Throughout the book, Dr. Farmer works to dispel the misinformation and misconceptions about Ebola, its symptoms, and how it spreads and why. He argues that the outbreak and high fatality of Ebola in West Africa was not inevitable, citing the hundreds of years of exploitation that created medical deserts and instability to be the cause. Dr. Farmer successfully and expertly

Farmer takes an extremely personal approach, giving a voice to two extraordinary individuals from a time where there was seemingly no space to have these in-depth explorations. Focusing on these specific stories allows Dr. Farmer to take a gendered perspective on caregiving, expanding the discussion to include holistic knowledge of caregiving. Dr. Farmer treats the narratives with great empathy and provides shared lived experiences of grief, humanizing the epidemic and its victims for an audience who only experienced the fearful news reports. To fully convey the fact that the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak was not inevitable, Dr. Farmer delves into the history of the region in the second section of his book, referencing the hundreds of years of exploitation and colonialism. Powerful empires, such as present-day Britain, France, Germany, and America, wrung the land of its natural resources: fuels like coal and oil, rubber, and diamonds. As the extraneous companies became rich from these resources, the people indigenous to West Africa saw no profit. During this time, these empires also neglected to develop any of the area, establishing zero medical schools or nursing schools and creating a clinical