Dr. Maria Asuncion Silvestre receives award from Hon. Chris Fearn, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Health of Malta and WHA76 President, with WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Dr. Hussain Abdul Rahman Al Rand, Asst. Undersec. for Public Health Sector, Ministry of Health and Prevention of the United Arab Emirates. © WHO / Pierre Albouy

Dr. Maria Asuncion Silvestre, an alumna of the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Medicine, has been honored with the prestigious 2023 United Arab Emirates (UAE) Health Foundation Prize presented during the 76th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.

The award is in recognition of her exceptional work as an advocate for exclusive breastfeeding and her efforts to improve the health of mothers and newborns.

Dr. Silvestre, also the founder of the non-governmental organization named Kalusugan ng Mag-Ina, Inc. (KMI), has dedicated her career to promoting the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding and implementing initiatives to enhance maternal and newborn health. Her groundbreaking protocol, Essential Intrapartum and Newborn Care, consists of a simple set of choreographed actions for health workers attending to a mother during delivery and her newborn in the critical moments after birth and during the first week of the child’s life.

“We sought to ‘re-choreograph’ actions in the first minutes to hours after birth, eliminating unnecessary steps, so we formulated a time-bound sequence of steps,” explained Dr. Silvestre during the awarding ceremony. She emphasized the protective nature of receiving at least one of the four core steps outlined in her protocol, stating that the more elements of essential care received, the greater the improvement in newborn survival rates.

“Breastfeeding saves lives,” she underscored, highlighting the crucial role it plays in early childhood development and health.

Through collaboration with the Philippine government and seventeen other countries in the Western Pacific Region of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Silvestre successfully scaled up the “Unang Yakap (First Embrace)” campaign for Early Essential Newborn Care. This campaign implements cost-effective interventions recommended by the WHO and has yielded positive outcomes in improving newborn survival rates, not only in the Philippines but also in other countries that have adopted the approach.

Dr. Silvestre currently chairs the Early Essential Newborn Care Independent Review Group (IRG) of the WHO Western Pacific Region Office, and co-directs I-CATCH community-based program for Unang Yakap and Breastfeeding in Dulag municipality, Leyte, Philippines.

The UAE Health Foundation Prize, established in 1993 under the directive of the late Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, aims to recognize individuals, institutions, or non-governmental organizations that have made outstanding contributions to health development. Past recipients of this esteemed award include prominent figures such as former US First Lady Hillary Clinton, Médecins sans Frontières, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dr. Silvestre was presented with a certificate of award, plaque, and cash prize of US$20,000. The prize serves as a testament to her dedication and innovation in addressing critical health issues particularly in the Philippines, and has the potential to positively impact the lives of mothers and newborns worldwide.

I Charmaine Lingdas