CHARAN MAHATUMARAT
When Charan Mahatumarat found out that he won His Majesty the King’s Anandamahidol Scholarship in 1984 to study craniofacial surgery, he started learning the royal language from a book he purchased.
Three months of preparation wasn’t enough to calm his nerves when he was about to enter Chitralada Palace to be granted an audience with His Majesty.
“I tried to pull myself together and concentrated on reciting words and sentences I would say to His Majesty,” said Dr Charan. “It [being granted an audience with HM] would be the highest honour in my life.”
He was brought to the palace by two scholarship committee members, and was taken to a room with two other students who had returned from studying.
The palace had prepared for him candles, incense and flowers covered with cone-shaped banana leaves and placed on a phan — a decorated tray with a pedestal — which Dr Charan presented to the King, before and after prostrating at His Majesty’s feet.
“His Majesty told me not to be too worried about studying so hard and suggested that I take some time to travel around and keep my eyes and ears open,” said Dr Charan.
Set up in 1955 by HM the King, the Anandamahidol Scholarship is awarded to highachieving students who wish to further their studies in pursuit of a master’s degree or doctorate in one of eight subject categories. Only eight recipients — one in each category — are selected each year.
Some 350 recipients have returned to Thailand — most of them to work as university lecturers. Addressing concerns of those who did not return, the scholarship’s committee members had suggested in the past that recipients should be asked to sign an agreement requiring them to return to serve the country.
“His Majesty made it clear to me that there are no strings attached, and while it is best to return to teach or work in the government sector, even a private sector employee would be considered as helping Thais,” recalled Dr Charan, now 67. “And if the recipient chooses not to return, then they will be equipped with the knowledge to get a job.”
The meeting lasted less than an hour, but the King’s words gave Dr Charan goosebumps, and he was determined to return to serve the country.
“At that time, craniofacial surgery didn’t produce good results. We could say it was nonexistent,” he said.
After completing his two-year study in 1986 at the South Australian Craniofacial Unit and Nassau University Medical Centre in New York, Dr Charan established a multidisciplinary craniofacial team at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital to treat patients with craniofacial anomalies with the same standard as leading medical centres worldwide.
Maintaining the same multidisciplinary approach today, the centre has specialists in 13 fields — plastic surgeons, neurosurgeons, paediatricians, dentists, ophthalmologists, ENT specialists, psychiatrists, anaesthetists, radiologists, psychologists, speech therapists, nurses and social workers.
The centre, which is now known as the Princess Sirindhorn Craniofacial Centre, would be the first of its kind in Southeast Asia and became a model for other centres in Ramathibodi, Siriraj, Khon Kaen and Chiang Mai hospitals.
From the start, the centre has been treating patients for free, offering travel expenses and accommodation to needed patients and their families. It operates on funding from the Thai Red Cross Society and public donations.
One of Dr Charan’s earliest patients was a child whose mother had no money to pay for hospital registration. Dr Charan offered her five baht to pay for the hospital card, and another five baht for the bus ride home.
Now, some 98% of the centre’s patients are from poor families.
“It’s strange how these deformities usually occur within poor families,” he told Spectrum at his cosmetic surgery clinic located within walking distance of the EmQuartier luxury shopping mall.
Children with craniofacial abnormalities have problems with their skull bones or have birth defects on the face and head. Doctors say few of the cases are due to genetics, and that the majority are caused by consuming contaminated food and water during the first few months of pregnancy.
In Thailand, approximately one in every 700 infants are born with a cleft lip and cleft palate.
The disfiguring “elephant’s trunk” disease, also known as Frontoethmoidal meningoencephalocele, occurs in one in 5,000 births. If untreated, the disease can also cause blindness and brain damage. Some 1,750 outpatients were treated at the centre last year, with 126 surgeries due to the limited number of surgical rooms.
Today, the portrait of Dr Charan kneeling on the floor speaking to HM the King has been placed in a gold frame at his clinic. Since 1987, at the request of former Anandamahidol recipient Pramote Maiklad, HM would grant an audience to scholarship recipients on an annual basis until he was too ill to do so.
The Anandamahidol Foundation is now chaired by Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who takes the role of granting an audience to scholarship recipients prior to their departure to study overseas.
Since January, Dr Charan has been president of the Anandamahidol Foundation Scholarship Recipients’ Club.
For the past seven years following retirement, Dr Charan has continued to serve as the director of Chulalongkorn University’s Princess Sirindhorn Craniofacial Centre which he had founded, without any pay.
“I will continue my work here until I die,” he said.