An inaugural awards ceremony in Vientiane spotlighted three champions of inclusive care — and drew new international pledges to reach communities long left behind by the health system.
VIENTIANE — On a Thursday afternoon in the Lao capital, a room of health workers, diplomats, and community advocates gathered to do something the country had never formally done before: name and honour the people quietly dismantling the barriers that keep its most vulnerable citizens from receiving medical care.
The occasion was the inaugural Inclusion Champion Awards 2026, held on August 14 under the theme “Inclusive Community Health.” The ceremony was not simply a celebration. Organisers framed it as a public signal — that inclusive healthcare in Laos is no longer a peripheral ambition, but a measurable, partnership-driven commitment with named individuals and institutions prepared to be held accountable for progress.
RELEVANT SUSTAINABLE GOALS
Three Winners, Three Frontlines of Exclusion
Three awards were presented on the day, each recognising a distinct dimension of the challenge of making healthcare genuinely accessible to all.
Mr Udon Souphavanh was recognised for his dedicated work in the HIV/AIDS response — a field that remains entangled with stigma across much of the region and demands not just clinical skill but considerable personal courage. TestVTE, a community organisation, was honoured for its contributions to community wellness, specifically through non-discriminatory testing, treatment, and mental health initiatives. Setthathirath Hospital received its award for leadership in inclusive public health at the institutional level.
A Government Committed to Leaving No One Behind
The country’s Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Phayvanh Keopaseuth, addressed the gathering and was unequivocal about what inclusive health services mean in practice. Non-discriminatory care, he said, is not a niche aspiration — it is essential infrastructure for achieving universal health coverage and for strengthening Laos’s national social protection systems.
Community participation remains vital to understanding specific barriers to care — such as stigma, violence, and discrimination — and to identifying practical ways to improve services for all citizens.
Dr Keopaseuth specifically noted the importance of community participation in understanding barriers that do not always show up in official data — among them stigma, violence, and discrimination — and the role of local knowledge in designing services that reach sexual and gender-diverse communities alongside other underserved groups.
Canada Steps In With New Funding for TestVTE
The ceremony also served as the occasion for a concrete new commitment. Canada announced fresh funding through its Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, directed specifically at TestVTE to support the expansion of its non-discriminatory testing, treatment, and mental health programmes.
The announcement was timed to reinforce the event’s central message: that recognising progress and investing in it are not separate gestures, but two parts of the same strategy.
The event was organised in partnership with the Ministry of Health, the Embassy of Canada, and CHIAs. It was held in collaboration with ten additional partners: the Embassies of Australia, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Thailand, and the United Kingdom to Laos; the Delegation of the European Union; the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation; Luxembourg Aid and Development; and GIZ Laos.
The breadth of that coalition reflects a decade of sustained cooperation between the Lao government, civil society, community organisations, and international development partners. Over that period, the collaboration has expanded essential health services, raised awareness of health-related rights, and worked to reduce the stigma that often prevents people from seeking care in the first place.
Why This Award Exists Now
The awards were framed by organisers as both a backward look and a forward commitment — a way of acknowledging the individuals and institutions that have made measurable progress in inclusive care, while signalling that the work is far from finished.
Access to healthcare in Laos has historically been shaped by factors well beyond geography and resources. Gender, age, disability, ethnicity, and social and health status have each acted as filters, determining who receives care and who does not. The awards ceremony made those filters explicit — and put names to the people and organisations actively dismantling them.
The alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the principle of leaving no one behind was formally reaffirmed at the event. For a country working to close persistent gaps in health access, the inaugural ceremony offered something rarely quantified in development reporting: public momentum.
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