Fernando Monckeberg

Since the 1960s, Fernando has been a pioneer in linking the eradication of child malnutrition and infant mortality to a country’s economic and social development. He has developed a cross-cutting model that successfully inserted a culture of health throughout Chile. Through the foundation of two national institutions that brought Chile to recognize that it had one of the worst infant mortality rates in the world, Fernando led what became a nation-wide effort over decades to nearly eradicate infant mortality and malnutrition. Fernando strongly believes that—to save a country from poverty and underdevelopment, a nation must first save its children from hunger. One of his biggest priorities today is to help Chile distribute the wealth of resources it has generated more effectively.