Deogratias managed to escape Burundi before a long period of genocide began there in the 1990s and fled to Rwanda and then to New York, where he arrived homeless and lived in Central Park. Eventually, a family living on Fifth Avenue helped him gain acceptance to Columbia University. Afterwards, he studied at Harvard Medical School where he first met Farmer, who was the subject of the book "Mountains Beyond Mountains," which was required reading for all incoming members of the class of 2009 this past summer.
Deogratias focused on the difficulties of providing medical services in countries in Africa that have only 156 doctors to help 7,000,000 citizens. He showed a PowerPoint presentation that displayed a picture of one doctor he encountered in Africa.
"He kind of looked sicker than some of his patients," he said.
Doctors were not the only health workers in short supply in Africa: many hospitals there have only three nurses to assist 350,000 patients. Several countries there also have only one medical school and some schools only a handful of professors to assist medical students.
Many staff members are not properly trained for their jobs.
"You don't need to be a pharmacist to work in the pharmacy," he said.
While many organizations have tried to alleviate healthcare problems in Africa, some of their efforts have not always been appropriate for the region, Deogratias said. He pointed to the World Bank's allocation of funding in Burundi as one example.
"Twenty-three percent of the funding was used for sexual abstinence program and less than five percent on testing and prescriptions for opportunistic infections," he said.
Much of the work in Burundi focused on teaching patients the ABC's -- Abstain, Be Faithful and Condom Use -- which he described as inadequate instruction. He met a woman there who was repeatedly raped and a bullet on the PowerPoint slide asked, "What good ABC would do for her?"
Still, he was careful not to criticize those who want to and are willing to help.
"You can be a good person who would like to help but it is always important to know what kind of help you are going to provide," he said. "These programs need to be used in the right place at the right time. If not, they may be insulting to people."
Deogratias ended on a hopeful note, showing statistics indicating that the number of patients tested for HIV in Bujumbura, Burundi has increased dramatically over the past decade. He also showed pictures of the site of a new clinic that is being built in Kigutu, Burundi, which will treat roughly 60,000 patients when completed.
