An example to emulate

       Krisana Kraisintu was in Manila last week,although too few of her fellow Thais noticed.Few even know her name. Yet Ms Krisana has brought more honour to her country,achieved more meaningful success in her work, and has made Thailand and the world a better place than just about all of her more famous compatriots put together. This admirable pharmacologist has used her education, but has ignored the standard postschool life of job and family. She has toiled for many years to try to bring quality of life to hundreds of thousands of Thais, other Asians and Africans. Her hard work has earned her Asia's Nobel Prize, the Magsaysay Award for public service.
       Winning the Magsaysay is one of the top honours that any Asian can achieve. The awards are named for former Philippine president Ramon Magsaysay, who died tragically in an airplane crash in 1957. The late president is lionised for his integrity and honesty, in addition to his government ability. The awards that honour his memory live up to the standard. They are not for sale; they are not glibly given.
       The first Thai to win a Magsaysay was Puey Ungphakorn, in 1965 for public service. Since then,24 prominent and little-known Thais have been among the award winners, who span the continent. The awards are given in six categories - government service, public service,community leadership, peace and international understanding, emergent leadership, and in journalism,literature, and the creative communication arts.
       Judging is tough, and deserving recipients are not found every year. Last year, Dr Therdchai Jivacate received the Magsaysay Award for public service for his work in providing prosthetic limbs to poor people. The same award went to the micro-financing effort of the Philippines Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development Mutually Reinforcing Institutions.
       Ms Krisana's story is one of selfless, devoted and most importantly beneficial service to her fellow humans.A trained scientist, she has seldom been in the laboratory since embarking on her career. She joined the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) in 1983. Her CV stressed her knowledge of drugs, but from the start of her career she focussed on making generic drugs.Her early achievements gave affordable pharmaceuticals for patients with hypertension and diabetes.
       When the worldwide HIV/Aids problem became an epidemic, Ms Krisana began to focus her attention and impressive vigour on this problem. Her heart was touched because so many of those infected with the disease were poor. Because they seldom could afford the new generation of drugs being developed, Ms Krisana took it as her goal to bring such drugs to the poor patients.
       She has allied herself with anyone able to help, and of course has fought governments and drug companies to bring generic medicine to the world. In Thailand, she actually invented the anti-HIV drug cocktail now known as GPO-VIR - affordable to most patients, but then made available to the very poor. She treated Thais and patients in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. But she became aware that roughly 1% of four million HIV and Aids patients were receiving anti-retroviral drugs in subSaharan Africa. So she took her campaign there.
       Ms Krisana has an explanation for her nearly three decades of making a difference:"I am a scientist but I am very sensitive." One person can make a difference.But working quietly, for neither wealth nor glory, she has shown that one person can change mindsets and move the world. It is Thailand's honour to have Ms Krisana as a citizen.