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Paul E. Farmer, M.D, Ph.D, executive vice president of Partners in Health, described by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author as "a man who would cure the world” will receive an honorary doctor of science degree on Friday, June 2, 2006 at the annual commencement exercises for Jefferson Medical College and Jefferson College of Graduate Studies. The exercises will take place at 10:30 a.m. at the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts.

Dr. Farmer, a medical anthropologist, is a founding director of Partners In Health, an international charity organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty.

He is known worldwide for his pioneering work in global health, focusing on diseases that disproportionately afflict the poor.

Dr. Farmer splits his time between Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he serves as chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities, and a small hospital built by Partners In Health in the tiny village of Cange, Haiti.

Since beginning his medical career in the 1980s, Dr. Farmer has devoted his life to improving the health and lives of the world's neediest people — building a health care center in central Haiti; helping prison officials fight epidemic tuberculosis in the former Soviet Union; working to fight multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) in the shantytowns of Lima, Peru. Most recently, Partners In Health has expanded its work into the African nation of Rwanda.

In a kind of Robin Hood fashion, Dr. Farmer has also begged and borrowed AIDS drugs from virtually any source he could find to provide medication to those who cannot afford them. He goes to the same lengths to secure medical supplies. He has been profiled in the PBS-TV documentary series, “Rx for Survival.”

More than 200 doctor of medicine degrees, doctor of philosophy degrees and master of science degrees will be conferred on students from Jefferson’s medical school and its school of graduate studies and basic science programs during commencement.

Founded in 1824, Jefferson Medical College has awarded more than 27,000 medical degrees and has among the most living graduates of medical schools in the nation. Jefferson offers both traditional medical education programs and innovative joint degree programs to its enrollment of approximately 900 students each year.