Filipino doctor and children’s rights crusader Bernadette Madrid, 64, was announced today as one of the recipients of the 2022 Ramon Magsaysay Awards. The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation lauded Madrid for her “transformative work” in providing protection and care to children and women victims of domestic abuse, and for “her admirable commitment in championing the rights of the most vulnerable.”
Madrid, who teaches Pediatrics at UP Manila and heads the Philippine General Hospital’s Child Protection Unit, “has designed programs and engaged with family courts, schools, hospitals, local government units, community organizations, and policymakers in advancing the cause of child protection,” said the Foundation.
The annual award, considered Asia’s Nobel Prize and named after the late Philippine president Ramon Magsaysay, has been given out since 1958 to individuals and organizations “whose selfless service has offered their societies, Asia, and the world successful solutions to some of the most challenging problems of human development.”
This year’s recipients also include Cambodian Sotheara Chhim, 54, a psychiatrist and mental health advocate who survived the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s and now provides psychiatric treatment to his countrymen suffering from that unique trauma, allowing him “to become his people’s healer,” said the Foundation; Tadashi Hattori, 58, a Japanese ophthalmologist “who has committed his time and resources in providing free eye surgeries in Vietnam,” which has limited eye care services and facilities; and French environmentalist and filmmaker Gary Bencheghib, 27, who has been working to eradicate plastic pollution in Indonesia’s rivers.
The honorees will be presented their awards in an in-person ceremony in November.