If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.

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.

Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru.

I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age he wanted to be an Episcopal priest because he so admired his priest a black man from someplace called Haiti.