Dr Tachi Yamada, executive director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Health Programme, announced yesterday the award would go to the Population and Community Development Association (PDA) for its outstanding family planning and HIV/Aids prevention works.

The award - established in 2000 to honour organisations that have made a major and lasting contribution to the field of global health - would be conferred to PDA president and founder Meechai at a special ceremony during the Global Health Council's 34th annual conference in the American capital.

The non-profit organisation was chosen from more than 90 nominees by a jury of global health leaders.

The PDA was set up in 1974 to provide family planning education to women in rural Thailand and is one of the country's biggest non-profit organisations.

Some of its health successes include helping to reduce the birth rate in Thailand from 3.2 per cent in the mid-1970's to less than 1 per cent.

The PDA also worked with the government in a nationwide HIV prevention campaign in 1991 and was praised for dramatically reducing new infections from 143,000 cases in 1991 to 19,000 cases in 2003.

"When we began our work in 1974, we couldn't have imagined a health crisis on the scale of HIV/Aids," Viravaidya said in a Gates Foundation release announcing the award.

"I was thrilled to see PDA's staff and volunteers rise to the challenge of the epidemic, and I am deeply honoured to accept this award on their behalf," he said in the statement released yesterday.

"Meechai Viravaidya is widely known as Thailand's 'Condom King,' a testament to his extraordinary popularity as well as his personal leadership in family planning and HIV prevention," said Nils Daulaire, president and CEO of the Global Health Council.

"The world needs more leaders like Mechai, who are willing to tackle taboo subjects like sex and HIV/Aids directly in order to save lives," he added.