Dr Worawit Tantiwattanasap, director of Umphang Hospital, has spent his entire career treating patients along the remote and rugged terrain of the Thai-Myanmar border. “Border doctors are like soldiers, but the enemy isn’t people or armies, it’s disease,” he tells me in our interview on June 19. “Preventing epidemics from crossing into Thailand is crucial.”
He has a passionate way of cutting through every policy debate about who deserves care and who doesn’t. “Borders are concepts created on paper by maps; they don’t exist in the wild,” he says. “Mosquitos fly back and forth across the border, travel without passports, don’t ask for visas. We have to take care of everyone; we shouldn’t choose by nationality.”
Dr Worawit received the 2026 United Arab Emirates Health Foundation Prize from the World Health Organization (WHO). The award was presented during the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 20.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.