Filipino doctor recognized in US for championing reproductive health
A Filipino doctor, who once served as a doctor to the barrio, was named as one of the “new generation of family planning leaders” by the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute.
Image grabbed from gmanetwork.com
Dr. Marvin Masalunga became the first Southeast Asian doctor to join the 120 Under 40 campaign for youth leaders who champion the cause of reproductive health around the world. The 40 winners come from all over the world and from different fields, such as journalism, civil society, medicine, and research.
Masalunga will join nine others in a series of talks at Maryland, Washington, and New York as part of the program by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute.
“It’s a validation of what I, and our group of rural health workers in Palawan, do for the people. Aside from that, it speaks that I am probably doing something right in my service,” Masalunga said in an interview with GMA News.
The 27-year-old doctor was nominated by the non Forum for Family Planning and Development, a non-government organization concerned with population management.
Masalunga is hoping to improve maternal health and educate the youth of their reproductive health rights to lessen the cases of maternal mortality and teenage pregnancy in Coron and other rural areas. He plans to take up pathology as his specialization and to create an adolescent forum to “empower the youth to know more about their reproductive health rights, and how they can take care of themselves better.”
Source: gmanetwork.com, kickerdaily.net
