Mighty Magulang: Fe del Mundo

[0:00]Meow meow. It's August 6, and today in Philippine history, Fe del Mundo died in 2011 at the age of 100. She was born in Manila to Bernardo and Paz del Mundo. Her father served in the Philippine Assembly as a representative of Tayabas (Quezon Province). Three of her eight siblings died in infancy, and she had a sister who died of appendicitis at age 11. So all of these personal tragedies inspired her to become a doctor. She finished her medical degree from the University of the Philippines in 1933, graduating class valedictorian. She passed the board that same year. I think she placed third. She took her postgraduate studies in the United States and had research fellowships in various institutions in Baltimore, Boston, and Chicago. She returned to the Philippines in 1941 and volunteered for the International Red Cross. She helped child prisoners at the UST Internment Camp and treated the injured after the Battle of Manila in a makeshift camp that eventually became the Jose Reyes Medical Center. She was an educator and a researcher. The incubator made out of bamboo which did not require power is credited to her. But her dream was to create a private pediatric hospital. So she sold all of her stuff. She sold her house. She got a loan from the GSIS, so that she could build this 107 bed hospital in Quezon City. And in 1957, the Children's Medical Center was inaugurated. We know it today as the Fe del Mundo Hospital. She never married, she never had children of her own, but because of her devotion to medicine and to public service, she was actually the mother and caregiver to a certain degree to thousands of Filipino children. O di ba?