Fe del Mundo

Fe del Mundo (1911 to 2011) was a Filipino pediatrician who founded the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines and helped shape the country's modern child healthcare system, in a career of more than seventy years. Born in Manila, she took her medical degree at the University of the Philippines in 1933 and trained further in pediatrics and bacteriology in the United States, including a research fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital. During the Second World War she cared for child internees at the University of Santo Tomas camp and became known as the Angel of Santo Tomas. In 1957 she opened the Children's Medical Center in Quezon City and founded the Children's Medical Center Foundation, and in 1966 an Institute of Maternal and Child Health followed. She headed pediatrics at Far Eastern University for more than two decades, was the first woman named National Scientist of the Philippines in 1980, and received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 1977.