Analytical comparison: Mountains beyond mountains:

Two books, “County” and “Mountains beyond Mountains,” paint a picture of what poor people experience in society. The primary character in “County,” Dr. Ansell, works as a physician at a County hospital, where the majority of the patients he treats are low-income individuals. The main character in “Mountains beyond Mountains,” Paul Farmer, is a politician who doubles as a doctor. He spends most of his time speaking with patients and urging the wealthy to make donations to aid the underprivileged. Dr. David Ansell admits that conditions at the Cook County hospital were deplorable and the first time he entered into men’s room; he says that the room was not suitable for use which forces him to run across the street to find a bathroom which he used(Ansell 2). He says that was the introduction to his first day in the County hospital. In the County Hospital, Dr. Ansell worked as an attending physician and in the book “County: Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago’s Public Hospital” he narrates some of his experiences for the time he was serving as a doctor in the public hospital. The experience that Dr. Ansell narrates the first day he entered the Cook County hospital opens our eyes to see that the hospital was built for poor people because the conditions were unbearable even to him as a doctor (Ansell 2). It is unfortunate that citizens live in the same country, but they are subjected to different kinds of medical conditions because of their social classes. This is a reflection of the social segregation that was dominant in Chicago in the United States.

In the ”mountains beyond mountains,“ it is clear that Paul Farmer as a doctor is very much concerned about the health situation of poor people in Haiti and Peru. He forms a nonprofit organization with a sole purpose of raising funds to help the poor people in Haiti, Peru and other countries in South America get access to medical healthcare (Kidder 44). This is an indication that poor people in South America cannot afford to pay for better health care just like it is the case with poor people in Chicago. Farmer is very much worried because he knows that some governments and politicians know about the health conditions in the two countries but their main concern is their political ambitions and power. At some point in the book, we are told that ”Only in Haiti would a child cry out that she’s hungry during a spinal tap.“ (Kidder 32). This statement is an emphasis on the sever plight of poor people living in South America. The two cases of Haiti and Peru and Chicago is a reflection of the social injustices that is deeply rooted in the society even today.

In the book ”County“ Dr. Ansell says that the payment system within the healthcare is the major driver of the inequalities that patients experience. According to Ansell politicians and the public think that when a person enters an emergence room, then they receive healthcare a belief which he rubbished because there is more to be done for an individual to be counted as having received healthcare. People with nowhere else to go for medication are the ones that were treated at the Cook County hospital, but those with money had various options. Comparing this to what Paul Farmer in the ”Mountains beyond mountains” stands for indicates the same conditions. Farmer through his nonprofit organization and other partners raises money to help in the provision of health care and fighting off diseases in third world countries (Kidder 29). This is an indicator that health care provision and access in third world countries is inadequate because of lack of financial resources or money by people living in those third world countries. Healthcare is supposed to be a universal thing because everybody is entitled to having good health care with or without money. Therefore, money is a hindrance to attaining healthcare equality among people in the society for both the United States and South Americans.

Comparing both books, the aspect of sent saviors is portrayed. Ansell’s character is that one of compassion and needs to help the poor in the society. In fact, he confesses that he went to medicine school because he wanted to assist people but later on he was disillusioned by the kind of conditions in the same hospitals where people are supposed to seek medication. This means that Ansell was like a savior to poor people in Chicago who came specifically came for the sake of bringing social justice to people through the provision of better healthcare to the poor in the society. In ”Mountain beyond mountains“ Farmer is referred to as Saint in many occasions even though he denies that he had not achieved that status yet as he was working harder to become a saint. But Tracy Kidder says that he has never met such a man like Farmer because he is close to a saint (Kidder 31). From the book, Farmer rarely sleeps because he travels all the time attending to patients in Russia, Haiti, and Peru and when he was not attending to patients he offers advice to doctors in the best way they can treat patients. Despite all his commitments, lucrative and prestige fellowships, Farmer lives in a small apartment which shows his selfless and generous nature. Sometimes, his friends got amazed at how Farmer was serving selflessly. For instance, Ophelia Dahl and Kidder admits that the generosity of Farmer is just beyond measure for this reason they begin to question their lifestyles (Ansell 37). At some point Farmer neglected his wife and children for the sake of traveling to go and meet patients in different countries. He openly admitted that he valued lives of poor patients more than his loved ones because the majority of them are poor and they need him more than his family needs him. Acts of selflessness by Farmer is an indication of social justice that people ought to emulate in the society today.

In both books, the two doctors have learned social life lessons through their interaction with the less fortunate members of the society. Ansell in the course of his duty, he met an elderly woman by the name Jackpot who was suffering from depression because her grand children had been shot by a gang in the streets. The blood pressure of the woman had shot up, and Ansell did not know what to do about that because he never learned about the treatment of such kind of condition when she was in college. But through the narration of the story, Ansell admits that he learned the virtue of compassion even though he did not have medicine for grief. Stories of different people who had lost their loved ones through street violence were narrated to Ansell which made him know about street violence more and learn of the social injustices that were dominant in the streets of Chicago (Ansell 49). After health surveys had been conducted on door-to-door, it was revealed that majority of the people were asthmatic, depressed, heavy smokers and suffered from hypertension in the poor neighborhoods compared to the whites. Ansell learned from this survey that poverty, racism, and violence were all attributed to poor people. Ansell also learned from his patients that poverty is so destructive because it caused damage to many people who visited him for medication and he admits that the lessons were so painful for him to learn at age twenty-six. Finally, Dr. Ansell admits that he learned a lot from his patients and he discovered some of his medicine tools from patients because of the long term interact he had with them. Difficult which people went through taught him how he can survive in difficult times of his life. Ansell believes that hope and embrace are medicines in themselves and therefore human beings should give hope to each other as a way of taking care. Farmer, on the other hand, was brought up in a religious background where he learned Catholicism especially ”liberation theology“ that helped him advance in his career as a doctor and servant leader. Liberation theology asserts that real problems faced by human beings should be solved rather than wait on God to remedy them. This formed the foundation of Farmer’s selfless service to solve health care problem among poor people. Lastly, Virchow says ”Physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should be mostly resolved by them.“(Kidder 61). This is a life lesson that most social problems have solutions amongst human beings themselves.

Works cited

Ansell, David A. County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago’s Public Hospital. Chicago Review Press, 2011.

Kidder, Tracy. ”Mountains beyond mountains: healing the world: the quest of Dr. Paul Farmer.“ (2003).