Thira Woratanarat
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Dr. Thira Woratanarat M.D. (born in 1972) - is a somewhat lesser-known Thai public health expert, specialised in the fields of HIV, preventive vaccine, and clinical epidemiology.
Graduated from Mahidol University, Thailand, with First Class Honour, he then finished his master degree in clinical epidemiology from University of Newcastle, Australia, and continued his postdoctoral fellowship in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He started researching on human immunodeficiency virus diseases straight after his graduation together with doing clinical management for HIV infected people at Bamrasnaradura Infectious Institute, which is nationwide acknowledged as the first hospital in Thailand to be responsible for HIV management in Thailand. After that period, he was appointed to be a chief of medical services research section at Bureau of AIDS, TB, and STIs, Thai Ministry of Public Health, and successfully founded "Thai AIDS Society" in 2001 with various Thai Infectious Diseases experts from all academic institutions in Thailand. His reputation was acquired both nationally and internationally during the era of HIV/AIDS epidemic and highest influx of HIV infected people in Thailand without standard treatment and care.
He is a pioneer in development of national access to antiretroviral therapy in Thailand.
A pilot project entitled "Access to Care (ATC)" was ignited in 2000 starting with 8 standard HAART regimens for 1200 adult patients in various levels of hospitals in Thailand. The project was then expanded to be a current national program called "National ARV for People Living with HIV/AIDS" or "NAPHA" running for more than 80,000 infected people in the country under national insurance scheme free-of-charge.
He also served as an investigator for an ongoing largest phase III clinical trial for prime-boosted HIV vaccines in the world, implementing in Chonburi and Rayong provinces, which are located at the eastern seaboard of Thailand. The study involves 16,000 healthy people to evaluate the efficacy of prime-boosted HIV vaccines to prevent HIV infection. The results should be released in 2009.
