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Published on January 26, 2008

A Thai pharmacist known for her courage and tireless work of helping the global poor by bringing affordable generic HIV/Aids and malaria drugs to help victims has been recognised as the Reader's Digest Asian of the Year for 2008.

Krisana Krisintu, a 55-year-old pharmacist, was selected by the editors of the Asian edition of Reader's Digest as the person who best embodies the contemporary expression of Asia's values and traditions. She received the prestigious award and a cheque for US$5,000 (Bt 165,500) by editor-in-chief Jim Plouffe.

"My mother often told me, if you have a chance to do a good thing, you should," she said.

After getting her doctorate in the United Kingdom, Krisana returned to Thailand in 1981. She taught pharmacology for three years, then joined the publicly owned Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO). When Krisana turned 37, in 1989, she was chosen to head its newly created research and development institute.

As a hard driving and non-nonsense leader, Krisana quickly developed inexpensive drugs for diseases ranging from hypertension to diabetes. Her medicines were cheap because they didn't involve expensive basic research and used the same key ingredients as those in drugs first created by Western multinationals.

Making such drugs - known as generics - was legal since the patents on the originals had expired. Although not technically difficult, the process involved extensive research and testing.

When Aids spread quickly throughout Thailand in 1992, Krisana decided to make generic versions of HIV/Aids drugs known as antiretrovirals (ARVs). She was especially interested in zidovudine, a drug that reduced the chances of pregnant HIV-positive women passing the virus to their children.

Zidovudine was originally developed to combat cancer - and is highly toxic. Krisana immediately ran into opposition, as her colleagues were against the idea. However, she knew that if the proper precautions were taken, handling the chemicals to make zidovudine was safe. Nevertheless, she worked alone. Wearing a mask, gloves and goggles she analysed drugs and experimented with formulations for six months

In 1995, she produced her first generic zidovudine capsules at one-fifth the cost of the branded original. It was the developing world's first generic ARV.

The combination pill had to be taken twice a day instead of the usual six-pills-a-day regiment. The drug was also 18 times cheaper. As a result, more than three quarters of the 100,000 people being treated for HIV/Aids in Thailand now take Krisana's "three-in-one" cocktail.

In late 2002, Krisana received a call from the owners of a factory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where many of their employees were dying of AIDS, and Krisana immediately agreed to help.

She has also helped Tanzania produce a generic ARV and trained hospital staff in four West African countries to make artesunate suppositories, a treatment that she developed for children with severe malaria.

Krisana has also helped turn a moribund pharmaceuticals factory in Mali into the first sub-Saharan facility to produce anti-malarial tablets on an industrial scale. In the same year, Krisana resigned from the GPO and became an independent consultant.

In 2007 she worked with the Mae Fah Luang Foundation, a charity named after the Thai King's mother, to set up a factory making inexpensive drugs to fight malaria in Burma and Aceh in Indonesia.

However, when Krisana revealed to the foundation that the incident of malarial infection in Africa was higher than in Burma and Indonesia, the foundation discussed how they could help.

As a result, Krisana will today fly to Burundi and Kenya to help people and medical workers to improve basic health care service there for two months.

She will then return to Thailand with four doctors from Burundi for training, supported by the Mae Fah Luang Foundation.

Pongphon Sarnsamak

The Nation