Saturday, October 13, 2007 Dacawi: A mother to the world's kids passes on By Ramon Dacawi Benchwarmer
BAGUIO has just lost one who made a difference, not only for the city, the Cordillera, the country but the whole world.
Regional health officer, Dr. Myrna Cabotaje, told me the news last Monday, just after she and other officials launched “Ligtas Tigdas,” the immunization program to save the country's children from measles, a deadly disease again on the rise.
The last time I flinched over an interview botched by procrastination was a few years ago, when someone said Eugene Pucay Sr., the gentle Ibaloi patriarch, war hero and philanthropist quietly died in his sleep at 97.
Dr. Clavano passed away last Oct. 4, three days after her 76th birthday, at the Makati Medical Center after a lingering illness. She was laid to rest yesterday morning after a mass at the St. Joseph Church in Pacdal. She is survived by her husband Greg, three children and two grandchildren. Her number of years on this mortal plane matters not.
What does was how she used those years in a pioneering work that saved, continues to save and will save the greatest gift of life - babies and children. I go back to that piece several years ago to fill the vacuum created by a reporter's failure to do his interview until it's too late:
The greatest gifts sometimes come in small packages. This should be no empty motherhood statement at this time when, all over the world, former tiny bundles of joy honor those who delivered them to this world.
The gift is the Under Five Clinic, a small portion of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center. For over 30 years now, the facility has been attending to the needs of nursing mothers and their toddlers.
Formerly the Under Six, the tiny clinic gained international attention when its comprehensive system of caring for kids was adopted as a model by the World Health Organization, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund and the Department of Health.
This lasting contribution to world health is the legacy of a visionary lady physician in Baguio who established the unit in 1975 - Dr. Natividad Relucio-Clavano.
Then the chief of the hospital's pediatrics department, Dr. Clavano battled the onslaught of aggressively advertised commercial milk substitutes for infants. She believed then, and the whole world now believes, that non-human, bottle and plastic-fed milk can never approximate the nourishment and immunity from disease that babies get from the milk from their mothers' breasts.
Saddened by the growing number of mothers who bottled-fed, and thereby deny their newly born the crucial early bonding for mother and child, she set up the Under Six. She put in place a system of breastfeeding and rooming-in for the newly born with their mothers in the ward.
Four years later -- in 1979 -- the then Ministry of Health adopted Dr. Clavano's system as a national program. Long before manufacturers of milk substitutes began acknowledging their production promotion that mother's milk will always be the best.
Her system made the BGHMC the first baby-friendly hospital. Eventually, it became a model for the "Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiatives" of Unicef and WHO.
In 2003, the Venture Club of the Americas bestowed on Dr. Clavano the prestigious Mae Carvell International Award for her gift to womanhood and childcare.
The award was named in honor of the woman who organized the first Venture youth group in 1927. It gives recognition to men and women whose works help advance women's status, equal rights, education and employment and bring down economic and professional barriers that hinder women.
Dr. Clavano's achievement and contribution cover and advance most, if not all of these.
In 2002, the Under Five received the “Pag-asa” national citation under the annual merit program of the Civil Service Commission. Two years later, the unit headed by Dr. Esther Miranda bested 86 other hospitals throughout the country for Integrated Management of Childhood Illness Advocacy Award presented by the Philippine Pediatric Society during its 41st annual convention.
IMCI, a WHO, Unicef and DOH strategy, combines improved management of five major diseases among under-five children: pneumonia, diarrhea, malnutrition, measles and malaria.
Over the years, health workers all over the world have been visiting Baguio to learn from the mother-and-child care model that Dr. Clavano established and developed. In the words of the Venture Club, Dr. Clavano's gift has revolutionized the world as far as motherhood, womanhood and childcare are concerned.
Peppot Ilagan, late friend, brother and mentor, once observed: Children are a reminder from God that the world must go on. It's the best passage I've ever heard that explains what sustainable development is all about.
Dr Clavano's contribution put to action what Peppot meant and what this world needs to do to nurture and sustain God's gift - life.
