01/20/2020
Berkowitz shares his experience as a young neurologist providing care to Haitians who lack access to basic health care in this touching debut. Berkowitz began working in Haiti a few months out of residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He also trained Haitian neurologists and, through an eager doctor practicing in Port-au-Prince, he met Janel, a 23-year-old with a massive brain tumor. Janel could only be treated in the United States—if at all—which inspired Berkowitz and a dedicated team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to make a “big save.” Berkowitz’s efforts to provide Janel with treatment, despite criticisms about its cost-effectiveness, shape the book’s trajectory. Unfolding in a journalistic style, Berkowitz’s tale balances the twists and turns of Janel’s case with the author’s own reflections on the ethics of health care inequity. Berkowitz asks difficult, sometimes heartbreaking questions about how to treat poor people when they have no access to care. While Berkowitz provides few answers, his harrowing stories provide plenty to ponder. (June)
Inspiring . . . a worthy follow-up to Tracy Kidder's portrait of Dr. Paul Farmer in Mountains beyond Mountains.”
In this touching debut Berkowitz asks difficult, sometimes heartbreaking questions…While he provides few answers, his harrowing stories provide plenty to ponder.
It is always a pleasure to meet a doctor who practices his profession with love, willing to embrace the wretched complexity which comes with believing that all lives should be valued equally. The stories in One by One by One are absorbing, sometimes harrowing, and told with admirable, unmistakable sincerity."
"Vivid, clear-eyed, and very smart…For medical relief workers around the world, it must be required reading. For the rest of us, too."
"Confronts the jarring inequities of health care in Haiti and the U.S., and becomes both the deliverer and the delivered. By avoiding the pedestrian recounting of medical heroism in a disadvantaged country, he tells a marvelous and searing tale of hope in hopeless circumstances."
Stirring and acute, this beautifully rendered account of an unforgettable story is filled with honest reflection that will alternately swell and break your heart, only to heal it in the end.
"From the first page onward, One by One by One reads like a medical thriller. The story of trying to save a life against impossible odds will grip you and also fill you with admiration for Aaron Berkowitz. There are not always easy answers or solutions to the clear injustices he describes, but Berkowitz expertly navigates us through the reality of what is possible when fiercely intelligent and kind-hearted altruistic people come together. His heart-felt book will inspire you to see the world differently and compel you to be a part of that positive change."
A moving account of the challenges and difficulties of helping those in need in other countries—and the ethical dilemmas about whom to help and how. This striking narrative should get us all talking.
One by One by One is an engaging story of what can happen when idealism collides with reality in providing advanced healthcare to the world‘s most vulnerable citizens. Highly recommended for anyone interested in medicine or global health.
"Berkowitz offers a riveting insider’s look at the ethical dilemmas inherent in humanitarian work. His storytelling is at once urgent and empathetic, a compelling combination that offers readers a thoughtful and honest view of the complexity that unfolds when a young Harvard neurologist brings a Haitian boy to Boston for a life-threatening neurosurgery. The questions in this book will stay with you long after you turn the last page."
This story of a great, humane physician, working in the bleakest of settings, is a model of what caregiving at its best can be.
★ 2020-03-24
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.
Inspiring . . . a worthy follow-up to Tracy Kidder's portrait of Dr. Paul Farmer in Mountains beyond Mountains.”
Berkowitz and Janel's ambitious journey proves that choosing "solidarity over sustainability, compassion over cost-effectiveness" is something that each one of us can also adopt amidst the difficulty of our world.”
In this touching debut Berkowitz asks difficult, sometimes heartbreaking questions…While he provides few answers, his harrowing stories provide plenty to ponder.
