Mechai Viravaidya

After graduating in 1965, he returned to Thailand and was employed as an economist in the National Economic and Social Development Board for eight years.

After experiencing firsthand the increasing poverty that created the country's social and economic dislocations, he devoted his life to addressing it.

Facing the problem

Upon returning home, Viravaidya saw that the Thai Government could not afford to keep helping its rapidly increasing population. The answer for him was to reduce population growth with birth control, a suggestion that did not get a good initial reaction.

In the face of this scepticism, he founded the Population and Community Development Association (PDA) in 1974, which continues today. In the PDA, Viravaidya spent years building an innovative, engaging, and entertaining community education program, which both distributed contraception and educated the community about its benefits, bringing the topic into the open.

Many in the government and wider community thought that a focus on contraceptive help would affect Thailand’s internationally popular sex tourism industry. Undaunted, Viravaidya persuaded the powerful independent Thai military, who were out of political reach of government, to air regular safe sex announcements.

Eventually, Thai leaders were largely united behind progressive family planning policies and the idea of government encouraging condom use. Teachers were trained in contraceptive education. Oral contraceptives were made available at local markets and hairdressers, and given to trained nurses, midwives, taxi drivers, police, and shopkeepers to distribute.

Cabbages and Condoms

The ‘Cabbages and Condoms’ initiative was designed to change attitudes, so that condoms would be considered as common and as accessible as cabbages. The uptake was so widespread that ‘Cabbages and Condoms’ is now the name of a chain of not-for-profit restaurants across Thailand. Profits support the PDA programs in primary health, education, HIV/AIDS prevention and rural development, and schools for disadvantaged young people.

This social change led to the legalisation of abortion, and today Thai citizens enjoy universal health care.

By 2000, the number of children in the average Thai family had dropped by 80 per cent.

Viravaidya’s dedication meant that the use of contraceptives by women in Thailand jumped from just 17 per cent in 1970 to 75 per cent in 2022.

In 2007, his association won the Gates Award for Global Health, which included a US$1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

A legacy continues

Now in his eighties, Viravaidya’s work continues to address the same concerns, combating economic social inequality by reducing births, preventing deaths from AIDS and tackling poverty, financial dependence and ignorance.

His latest focus is finding ways to reunite families in Thailand separated by climate change–driven migration. He still works in the Mechai Bamboo Schools program, which reorients rural schools across Thailand, turning them into lifelong learning centres and active contributors to community life.

In 2022,  Viravaidya told The New York Times that "if we hadn’t stepped in, it would have been to the deep detriment of the economy of Thailand and the quality of life."

He credits the combination of his family background and his education in Australia as key in making him knowledgeable and comfortable with both Thai people and Westerners. This foundation, coupled with infectious charisma, has given him an enhanced ability to pitch his projects to a range of audiences and win funds from foundations, development organisations and foreign governments.

With his skills in marketing and communication and his drive, Mechai Viravaidya continues to benefit lives and makes people smile, fifty years after he started his endeavour.