Award for Mr. Condom: Mechai

Thai “Condom King” Receives Gates Award for Global Health

WASHINGTON, DC, May 31, 2007 — Mechai Viravaidya, a longtime member of the PSI Board of Directors, accepted the 2007 Gates Award for Global Health on behalf of The Population and Community Development Association (PDA) of Thailand, the organization he founded in 1974. For over 30 years, PDA has helped improve lives and strengthen communities in Thailand, through HIV prevention and family planning programs that have become international models.

Mechai and PDA worked closely with the Thai government to develop and implement a groundbreaking national HIV prevention program that led to a dramatic reduction in new HIV infections in Thailand, from 143,000 in 1991 to 21,000 in 2003. Because of his creative and often humorous approaches to promoting condom use, Mechai is known as Thailand’s “Condom King” and the generic word for condom in Thailand is “Mechai.”

 Mechai founded PDA to provide family planning services to many rural communities that were not reached by government programs at the time. Using a nationwide network of village-based volunteers, PDA empowered women to plan their pregnancies, giving both mothers and children the opportunity to live healthier lives. PDA’s comprehensive approach to poverty reduction also addresses income generation, water resource development, sanitation projects, environmental conservation, and promotion of gender equality and democracy.

Today, PDA's 600 employees, and more than 12,000 volunteers work in 18 regional development centers and branch offices throughout Thailand. Through its international training program, PDA has trained 2,900 people from 50 countries in innovative approaches to HIV prevention, family planning, adolescent reproductive health, and other issues.

Other recent winners include The Carter Center, the African Medical and Research Foundation, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee and the Brazil National AIDS Program.

Established in 2000 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gates Award for Global Health recognizes organizations that have made major and lasting contributions to the field of global health. The award is administered by the Global Health Council, and presented at its annual international conference in Washington. A jury of international public health experts selects the award recipient based on leadership, record of achievement, innovation in program design, program stability and sustainability, collaboration with others, and impact across geographic and organizational boundaries. The prize consists of an award sculpture and $1 million. This year, almost 100 organizations were nominated for the award.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aug 2007, Profile of Mechai Viravaidya
one of the PSI Board of Directors

In 1995, AsiaWeek magazine published the following profile of Mechai Viravaidya, a member of PSI's Board of Directors, as one of "Twenty Great Asians" of the 20th century. Other Asians profiled included democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh. Below is the full article.
Mechai Viravaidya trained as an economist. But instead of juggling statistics, he ended up juggling condoms. He blew them up like balloons to popularize them among villagers. He even sent one to U.S. President Ronald Reagan. He roamed Bangkok's red-light districts, handing out contraceptives to prostitutes and their clients. So identified is Mechai's name with the prophylactics in Thailand that a "mechai" is a what people ask for when they want a condom.

The 54-year-old Thai social activist is proud to be known as "Mr. Condom." For two decades he was the driving force behind a grassroots population-control program that is considered one of the most successful anywhere. He has led a vigorous campaign against AIDS, and worked to improve the lives of Thailand's rural poor. In recognition of these achievements, he was given the Ramon Magsaysay Award for public service last year.

Mechai was drawn to social action by his parents. His Scottish mother and Thai father were both dedicated physicians. When he returned home in the mid-1960s with a degree in economics from Australia, his mother said to him: "You got an education not because you are bright, but because we had the money. If people like you work for profit, who is going to work for the poor?"

Mechai's first job was with the government's national planning agency. When he was sent up-country to report on development programs, he noticed that in every village he visited, children abounded. He resolved to do something to control Thailand's population, which was then growing at an annual rate of 3.2%. He knew that women would not improve their lives, children would not be educated, the country would not develop, unless the growth rate was checked. But the government lacked funds to tackle the problem. So in 1973 Mechai quit his job to develop a system "where the people had a role" in forging the solutions.

A year later he founded the Population and Community Development Association, a non-profit group that spread the message of birth control in the hinterlands. Mechai is a believer in humorous, attention-getting slogans. He loaned "family-planning buffaloes" for plowing at half the usual rate to farmers who adopted birth control. In one district he introduced "family-planning hogs" whose stud services were available free to those practicing contraception.

He used a similar tack in cities. Realizing that most Thais were reluctant to bring up the subject of birth control when visiting doctors, Mechai opened a vegetable stand in Bangkok that also sold condoms. He called it "Cabbages and Condoms." The idea appealed to the traditional Thai sense of sanook, or playfulness. Later he set up "Cabbages and Condoms" restaurant that promoted both vegetarianism and family planning. It featured a "Vasectomy Bar" where customers were entitled to a free drink if they go a vasectomy at the association's clinic next door.

By 1978, Mechai's spirited campaigns had become so successful that the government adopted his sanook approach to family planning. Today Thailand's population growth remains at its 1991 level of a little more than 1%, and is a model for other developing countries.

But just when population growth started to level off, the specter of AIDS surfaced. The government refused to acknowledge the extent of the problem until Mechai and other health workers raised the issue in lectures, public speeches and interviews. In 1991, six years after Thailand's first full-blown AIDS case came to light, the government appointed Mechai as minister in charge of tourism, information and the national AIDS program.

He mobilized a nationwide network of volunteers who distributed cards, audio cassettes and videos containing information about AIDS, and he defended the rights of AIDS patients by opposing mandatory blood tests. In addition, he launched the Thai Business Initiative in Rural Development, or T-BIRD, a project aimed at arresting the migration of poor villagers, particularly women, to urban areas, where prostitution is rife.

His campaign to promote the use of condoms has helped to significantly reduce sexually transmitted diseases, thereby preventing the spread of AIDS. But the battle is far from won. The World Health Organization estimates that almost 20 million people worldwide have been infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Thailand has recorded more than 13,000 cases of AIDS since 1979. The virus is spreading fastest in South and Southeast Asia, says WHO. Since 1993, HIV infections in the region double to 3 million.

Mechai believes that Asia has yet to feel the full force of the pandemic. He predicts that AIDS will soon be more prevalent here that in Africa, where an estimated 11 million people are HIV carriers. "Thailand is going to be hurt," says Mechai, but because the country has an advanced AIDS-awareness program, "it won't be hurt as badly as India and Pakistan."

Now out of government, he is campaigning to involve businesses in rural development. "The move in the next decade," he says, "will be towards responsible business." After all these years, Mechai is still carrying out his mother's wishes.



 Mechai founded PDA to provide family planning services to many rural communities that were not reached by government programs at the time. Using a nationwide network of village-based volunteers, PDA empowered women to plan their pregnancies, giving both mothers and children the opportunity to live healthier lives. PDA’s comprehensive approach to poverty reduction also addresses income generation, water resource development, sanitation projects, environmental conservation, and promotion of gender equality and democracy.

Today, PDA's 600 employees, and more than 12,000 volunteers work in 18 regional development centers and branch offices throughout Thailand. Through its international training program, PDA has trained 2,900 people from 50 countries in innovative approaches to HIV prevention, family planning, adolescent reproductive health, and other issues.

Other recent winners include The Carter Center, the African Medical and Research Foundation, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee and the Brazil National AIDS Program.

Established in 2000 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gates Award for Global Health recognizes organizations that have made major and lasting contributions to the field of global health. The award is administered by the Global Health Council, and presented at its annual international conference in Washington. A jury of international public health experts selects the award recipient based on leadership, record of achievement, innovation in program design, program stability and sustainability, collaboration with others, and impact across geographic and organizational boundaries. The prize consists of an award sculpture and $1 million. This year, almost 100 organizations were nominated for the award. www.psi.org/about_us/mechai2.html

 31-10-2007 note from Condomerie: Just after the Condomerie opened in may 1987 a thai-female stagiaire/trainee from  the Population and Community Development Association (PDA)-Thailand's foremost non-governmental charitable organization.  [ then run by Mechai as far we know- was sent all the way from Asia to the Condomerie, to spend some time in the Condomerie [ worlds first specialized condomshop ] studying and examining this brandnew anti-aids initiative in Amsterdam, by talking to employees, owners and clients. We hope that the Condomerie, by its existence only, formed in that simple way one of the many inspiration sources that inspired Mechai's for his brilliant idea of Cabbages and Condoms.  Please visit www.cabbagesandcondoms.co.th/Restaurant/Restaurant.asp and www.condomerie.com/condoms/content.php in Amsterdam to get inspired for your own aids/hiv initiative, where-ever that may be in the world.

 

 

 

 

- TERUG -