Former Health Chief Named to ZFF Board

The Zuellig Family Foundation recently welcomed former Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral to its board of trustees. She is the lone woman and the second former health chief in the ten-person board.

She brings to Foundation not just her clinical and public health experiences but her vast knowledge as well about the plight of the poor in the country, having been the Secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) before heading the DOH.

Her work, advocacy and proven integrity make her a great fit to the Foundation’s vision of being a catalyst to achieve better health outcomes for the Filipino poor.

In 2010, when Cabral received The Outstanding Filipino Award (TOFIL) for Government Service, the award-giving body noted that heading the DSWD was a “step out of her comfort zone” and that “in the process of reform, the soft-spoken and mild-mannered Cabral became more known as a strong-willed lady who had no qualms about being unpopular if it meant uplifting the lives of Filipinos.”

TOFIL, which was conceived in 1988 by the Junior Chamber International (JCI) Senate Philippines, also noted that her stints at DSWD and DOH landed her in the headlines and got her “associated with so many C’s: from condoms and the Catholic Church due to her staunch support of the Reproductive Health Bill, to the conditional cash transfer program, which benefited more than 800,000 poorest of the poor.”