'Gypsy Chemis' wins The Magsaysay

She was selected by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation to receive the prestigious award - the regional equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Krisana, 57, said she appreciated the honour and thanked the foundation for the award. She said that she would continue with her self-imposed mission of improving access to inexpensive medicines.

"I am indifferent to the awards I get, because with or without the honours I will have to continue with my work. I never expected any awards, but I am glad that people see what I am doing," she said.

The pharmacist said that her next project was in Burundi, where she would help local pharmacists produce malaria medicine with a machine to be shipped from China. She has devoted her time in the last five years to helping Africans battle Aids and malaria, the major causes of death on the continent.

A former head of the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation's Research and Development Institute, Krisana is credited with the development of the antiviral drug cocktail GPO-vir.

She won the Global Scientist Award from Norway's Letten Foundation in 2004 and was named Asian of the Year by Reader's Digest magazine in 2008.

Krisana was born on Surat Thani's Samui Island. She graduated from Chiang Mai University's Faculty of Pharmacy and obtained a doctorate in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the United Kingdom.

Senator Jon Ungphakorn congratulated Krisana on the latest honour. He said she was right for the Magsaysay Award judging from her work in helping to improve access to inexpensive medicines by patients of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award was created in 1957 in honour of the Philippine president who had lost his life in a plane crash a year earlier.