POSTGRADUATE STUDIES in pediatrics at Harvard, Boston, and Columbia Universities led to a residency at Billings Hospital in Chicago and a research fellowship at Harvard Medical School. But on the eve of World War II, despite attractive opportunities to remain in the United States, del Mundo returned home. “I told the Americans who wanted me to stay that I prefer to go home and help the children in my own country,” says the doctora. “I know that with my training for five years at Harvard and different medical institutions in America, I can do much.”

	BANNER displayed at the hospital enumerates its founder's legacy of excellence and commitment. [photo by Fides Lim]

This would become the pattern in her life. Between returning to the Philippines and staying in the United States, which she would revisit many times after the war for study tours and conferences, she always chose readily to go back home, where she wanted to do much more. She considered her trips abroad more as learning missions and for fund-raising to realize her dream of setting up a full-fledged pediatric center for both curative and preventive medicine.

Before that dream was realized, though, she first came to be called the “Angel of Santo Tomas” for her work with women and children during the Second World War. Initially housed at the Red Cross building near the University of Sto. Tomas (UST) internment camp, the “Children’s Home” she set up transferred to bigger quarters at the nearby Holy Ghost College (now Holy Spirit) when the number of patients grew to include expectant, convalescent, and nursing mothers. The makeshift hospice lasted from 1942 until 1944, when it was shut down after the Japanese ordered all the women and children back into UST.

After the war, del Mundo received commendations from the former prisoners and the U.S. government for extraordinary heroism in action. She would continue to receive letters and visits from her grateful wards for her courageous work.

But her one big dream became a reality at last on November 27, 1957, her birthday. With an P800,000 loan from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), some donations, and the proceeds from the sale of her first house, the 100-bed Children’s Memorial Hospital finally opened to serve the public. She patterned the hospital set-up after a facility she had admired in Chicago.

Just as she had moved into a new house, she sold this to build her hospital’s adult wing. She again had to sell yet another home to fund the construction of another unit of the hospital, the Institute of Maternal and Child Health. Inaugurated in 1972, this was the first of its kind in Asia dedicated to preventive medicine, training and research, and rural extension work.

Years before, in 1958, she had signed away personal ownership of the hospital and turned it over to a board of trustees. She was able to pay back her loans.

She continues to donate the fees from her own practice to support the 30-bed charity ward — much in the same way that she had invested much of her own money along with her time and talents in all the previous hospitals she headed. In 1948, when she left the North General Hospital as director and senior pediatrician, she had scarcely enough funds to pay for moving out her belongings. But as she once said, “While the specialty of pediatrics is far from rewarding in terms of financial returns, the satisfaction derived from guiding and serving children is worth much more than a check for services rendered.”

THESE DAYS, a wheelchair aids del Mundo’s movements. But it has not constrained her from fulfilling a tour of duty that has lasted 70 years — and still counting.

Every morning, barring the worst of weather or a rare bout of illness, she still rises at five to catch the early mass at Sto. Domingo or nearby churches. Then it’s back to the hospital she founded that was recently renamed after her in recognition of her innumerable contributions to pediatric and maternal care.

The hospital compound along busy Banawe St., Quezon City is also home to del Mundo. She lives in a modest little suite at the east wing of the second floor of the main building. She still remembers the early years when she had to move herself and the staff members who were living with her from floor to floor as the hospital was being built.

Today the once dizzying spin of lectures, hospital calls, conferences, and yet more meetings has come to a pause, along with the once endless cups of black coffee. But the line of young patients has not shortened as parents or grandparents that were former patients still ask for her personal services. And the doctora still prepares the “history of the day” and makes her rounds.

	A COMMENDATION from her alma mater, the University ofthe Philippines, hangs on one of the hospital's walls. [photo by Fides Lim]

“I’m glad I never got married,” says del Mundo. “I believe that I’ve been able to do what I’ve longed to do because of this.”

She remains forward-thinking and open-minded, even when it comes to population issues. A devout Catholic born and raised just beside the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros, she ranks religion as “the greatest influence” in her life. But she sees no conflict between practicing her faith and pursuing family planning programs that are opposed by Catholic church elders.

Apparently, she shares the belief that improving the quality of life of the poor means addressing the problem of unregulated birth rate. Even before the government began encouraging population control in the late 1960s, del Mundo had rural units in distant Palawan and Marinduque teaching family planning, reproductive and sexual health, and proper nutrition.

“I think that we can control population but still remain true to our religion,” she says simply.

Del Mundo is an avid believer as well in harnessing the role of the community and the importance of the team approach to primary health care. With her rural extension teams, she has traveled far and wide, enduring often primitive conditions, to instruct mothers on breastfeeding and to undertake the regular weighing of children under five and periodic examinations of water supplies.

Her own clinical studies include 150 scientific papers that range broadly from the measurements of 10,839 newborn babies and commonly missed children’s diseases to the pathogenesis of dengue fever and on immunization.

To her, the pediatrician must be “community-oriented and community-involved,” if they are to achieve the best possible health care for the youth. “Medical students must go out into the provinces to see firsthand the problems that exist,” she insists. “Pediatricians must be able to translate medical knowledge into a language their patients will understand. Only in this way can a doctor acquaint their patients with the importance of preventive as well as curative medicine.”

She notes that most pediatricians are women, proving that they have assumed this role well. “Women make good pediatricians and they can very much influence parents in the care of children,” she told the Medical Observer. “I feel that if you give the world the best that you can, the best will always come back to you.”