Enriqueta Morales

Enriqueta Morales was a Panamanian nurse and feminist, born in Panama City on 29 March 1891 and dead there on 10 November 1986. She was among the first women given a national scholarship to study abroad and went to Belgium, where she studied pedagogy and trained as a nurse with the Belgian Red Cross. Back in Panama she directed a kindergarten, helped found feminist organizations in 1922 and 1923, and worked as head nurse of the Hospital Santo Tomas before becoming superintendent of the Panamanian Red Cross, a post she held until 1940. Through the Red Cross she set up school lunch rooms, prenatal and postnatal clinics and free pharmacies, and she founded the Casa Cuna kindergarten and daycare as well as institutions for patients with tuberculosis and leprosy, for orphans and for the poor. From 1941 to 1944 she served as a nurse for the Allied forces in the United States, and from 1947 to 1950 she was Secretary of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Labor and Public Health. Pope Pius XI awarded her the medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice.