My election as 1961 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Government Service is a great honor to me. I am glad that I am able to attend these ceremonies so that I can express my thanks personally.

In the first place, I thank the Board of Trustees for their decision to elect me as 1961 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee and for the Award the Foundation gives me.

The Board of Trustees based their decision on reports, articles and interviews. I express my thanks to those who wrote the reports and the articles, and those who gave the interviews, because their reports, their articles and their information provided background materials which by the Board of Trustees were considered as being sufficient to be used as a basis for their decision.

Furthermore, I wish to express my gratitude to all those who from the beginning of my career as a government official until now have successively worked in cooperation with me. In particular, in connection with the yaws campaign, I wish to thank all officials in the Department of Health and the Provincial and Regency Health Services, in UNICEF and WHO, in the Civil and the Village Administration, the schoolteachers and all others who took an interest in our work.

I thank them the last, but my gratitude to them is no less. And I do not mention names because there are too many of those whom I should like to mention. Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you.