with bringing down thailand's soaring hiv infection rate and its high birth rate, work that wohim merous intnatial awards, including the $1 million gates foundation prize for global health. >> in 1960, thailand and the philippines had about the same population, about 60 million people, 50 million people. today, the philippines has 94 million people, and there's a lot of poverty. thailand has 1.8 children per family, it's got about 68 million people, and it's making progress. >> reporter: dr. malcolm potts, former head of the international planned parenthood federation, was an early collaborator with mechai. he says population stability has yielded many economic benefits. >> i think it's a seamless evolution. mechai, at least in the past, used to talk about fertility-led development, and once we had these contraceptive distributors in most villages, you know, after three or five years they were the people who had intensive chicken rearing, or who had a sewing machine, or had a microloan. >> reporter: thailand is no longer considered a less developed country, but there's a growing gap between the ba