A Unique Experience

In January 2007 my father received  The Prince Mahidol Award for Medicine 2006, a prestigious award for medicine in Thailand for his research regarding Oral Rehydration Therapy. I had the honor of accompanying my father, mother, and brother to Bangkok so my father could accept the award.

Each year the Prince Mahidol Foundation, which is chaired by the Princess, awards one person for medicine and another for public health. This year my father received the award for medicine and three doctors, who I had the honor to meet, shared the award for public health. They received the award for their role in proving oral rehydration therapy as an effective treatment for cholera and for figuring out how to deliver the treatment to the people who needed it but could not get to hospitals for treatment.

It was a brilliant idea for the international selection committee to show how basic science and field medicine came together to understand and solve this problem. Together there are estimates that the combined work on oral rehydration therapy has led to saving over 40 million lives and dramatically reducing fatality rates (especially amongst children) from a disease that turns out to be highly treatable if you know how to treat it. In fact, it is now treated in the home. The message was not just about this one disease but about how the approach of taking research to the bedside needs to be applied to so many other diseases the world still faces.

Words simply cannot describe the events we experienced. Needless to say, we got a very unique view of the country and were honored to see my father receive the award from the King on Wednesday evening.

Here are a series of pictures I took each day that help tell the story of what we experienced.

Day 1: Tour of the Palace and Temple of the Emerald Buddha  

Day 2: Award ceremonies and honorary lectures at Siraraj Hospital, Mahidol University 

Day 3: Events leading up to (and after) the ceremony with the King and Princess 

Day 4: My brother and I took a tour to the original capital of Siam, Ayutthaya (now in ruins)

Day 5: Shopping for silk at the Jim Thompson House (very well known place)

Day 6: A few shots of the hotel (The Oriental) before we left

Highlights:  Slideshow prepared by UT Staff using some of my pictures