Albert Schweitzer Says “Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.” So, it is important to have a good health to be Happy. Though we can do a lot of things by ourselves to keep our health good, sometimes we need to get help from others especially from Doctors to be healthy and therefore to be Happy. In the case of Infants, they fully depend on Others to have Good Health.
Apart from Parents, the Health professionals known as Pediatricians play a major role in keeping good health of Kids.
Can you believe that there were no Women Pediatricians before 1945? And, interestingly one woman became a Pediatrician over 10 years before the Medical Schools officially began admitting women. Her name is Fe Del Mundo. Have you ever heard about her name before? Most of the People should be reading about her after seeing Google’s Doodle for her 107th Birthday.
Dr.Fe Del Mundo‘s Life was really inspiring one. Passing her Life story to the next generation is essential to keep our World a better place for our Kids.
Fe Del Mundo was a Filipino pediatrician. She was the first woman who was admitted as a student of the Harvard Medical School. And, she founded the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines with her strong determination. Doctor Fe Del Mundo was honored with a lot of Awards for her self-less medical service to the people over the span of 70 years.
Doctor Fe Del Mundo was born on November 27th in Manila in the Philippines in 1911.
She was the sixth of eight children in her family. Her father served one term in the Philippine Assembly.
Sadly, 3 of her 8 siblings died in infancy. And, her older sister died from appendicitis at age 11. This older sister had the ambition of becoming a Doctor for serving the Poor. Her death made young Fe Del Mundo move towards the medical profession with strong determination.
Fe Del Mundo got enrolled in the University of the Philippines and earned her medical degree in 1933 with Good Grades. And, she passed the medical board exam that same year.
As Fe Del Mundo proved her potential through her Exams, the president of the Philippines Manuel Quezon wanted to offer her a full scholarship to study any medical field of her choice at any school in the United States. She decided to choose Harvard Medical School.
But Harvard Medical School was not taking women students at that time. Due to some unknown reason mostly due to an oversight, Harvard officials didn’t notice Fe Del Mundo’s gender and unwittingly enrolled their first female student.
This mistake wasn’t noticed by anyone until Fe Del Mundo arrived in Boston in 1936 and found herself in a men’s dorm. The head of pediatrics insisted that there was no reason to send her back to Philippines since she’d already been admitted. This is the interesting background of Fe del Mundo who then became the first female student at Harvard Medical School, over ten years before the school officially began admitting women, and the only woman to be enrolled at the time.
After doing further studies at a few other Universities in the United States, Fe del Mundo returned to the Philippines in 1941. She started working with the International Red Cross, and set up a hospice at an internment camp during the Japanese invasion of her Country Phillipines. She became known as “The Angel of Santo Tomas”. Because she helped the children detained at the University of Santo Tomas.
For a short period, Fe Del Mundo worked as a director of a new Government medical center once after her hospice was shut down by the Japanese in 1943. But the constraints of working for the government made her leave and start a private hospital.
To fund her hospital, Fe sold her home and almost everything she owned. The Children’s Medical Center, the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines, opened in 1957.
In her lifetime she published a lot of articles, reviews, and reports in medical journals.
Fe also wrote the “Textbook of Pediatrics”. Her Book was used in medical schools in the Philippines for many years. Throughout her long medical career, she was active in promoting public health. She also helped to improve the coordination between hospitals, doctors, and midwives.
Fe Del Mundo completing redefined the Philippine medicine to provide healthcare to thousands of poor families.
Since she sold her home to open her Hospital, she had to live in the hospital itself for the rest of her life. Even at the age of 99, she used to go rounds to check on patients with the help of a wheelchair. She passed away from a heart attack just a few months before celebrating her 100th birthday in 2011.
Dr. Fe Del Mundo received many awards including Ramon Magsaysay Award for outstanding public service. She also got the 15th International Congress of Pediatrics award. And, Dr. Fe Del Mundo was the first woman to be announced as the National Scientist of the Philippines in 1980.
We rarely see this kind of people who sell all their properties to help others and face all the difficulties to be a pioneer in their field with the intention of helping others.
Are you inspired by the life of Dr. Fe Del Mundo? Share it with your Friends to inspire them.
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