Medicine that mends the world

She has returned to Thailand to work with Ubon University's Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences to create forms of ya hom and other natural remedies for use in rural hospitals and for sale in local markets.

"Traditional herbal medicine is our cultural heritage," says Krisana, widely regarded with much admiration as "the gypsy pharmacist".

A training centre was established in Ubon to teach pharmaceutical professors and their students how to re-create traditional herbal medicine.

"I hope they will pass on this knowledge from generation to generation and make is as widely known as possible," says Krisana, 57.

She was born on Koh Samui into a family of doctors, and her grandfather was a traditional doctor.

Krisana earned her bachelor's degree in pharmacy at Chiang Mai University and completed her doctorate in pharmaceutical chemistry at Bath University in Britain.

She taught pharmacology in Thailand for three years, then joined the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation. In 1989, at age 37, she was named head of its new Research and Development Institute, and spent 22 years in the post, overseeing the creation of inexpensive drugs for ailments ranging from hypertension to diabetes.

The medicine was cheap because the research was inexpensive and the basic ingredients were borrowed from drugs created by Western multinationals.

These new generic drugs were legal since the patents on the originals had expired. Although not technically difficult to make, the process involved extensive research and testing.

At the same time she developed 64 herbal medicines.

When Aids was spreading quickly through Thailand in 1992, Krisana saw the need for generic versions of the HIV-Aids drugs known as antiretrovirals. She was especially interested in zidovudine, which reduced the likelihood that pregnant women who were HIV-positive would pass the virus on to their children.

Zidovudine was originally developed to combat cancer, but it's also highly toxic, and Krisana's colleagues were initially against the idea. She knew, though, that if the proper precautions were taken, the chemicals needed to make zidovudine could be safely handled.

Nevertheless, she worked alone. Wearing a mask, gloves and goggles, she analysed drugs and experimented with formulae for six months.

In 1995 she produced her first generic zidovudine capsules - at one-fifth the cost of the branded original.

It was the world's first generic antiretroviral, and the pills had to be taken only twice a day rather than six, as had been the case with similar combinative treatments.

More than three-quarters of the 100,000 people being treated for HIV/Aids in Thailand today take Krisana's "three-in-one" cocktail.

In late 2002 she responded to a plea for assistance from the owners of a factory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many of their employees were dying of Aids, and Krisana immediately agreed to help.

She subsequently helped Tanzania produce its own generic antiretroviral, and trained hospital staff in four West African countries to make artesunate suppositories, a treatment that she developed for children with the severe malaria.

Krisana meanwhile left her government post and became an independent consultant. In 2007 she worked with the Mae Fah Luang Foundation to set up a factory making inexpensive drugs to fight malaria in Burma and Indonesia's Aceh province.

Her discoveries and commitment earned her the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Southeast Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. This was duly added to the 2004 Global Scientist Award she received from Norway's Letten Foundation.

Last year Reader's Digest magazine declared her "Asian of the Year".

But Krisana keeps such honours in perspective.

"I'm indifferent to the awards," she says, "because with or without them I'll have to continue with my work. I never expected any awards, but I am glad that people see what I am doing."