Spotlight

Gerardo Cabrera-Meza, MD (Lalo), a native of Guatemala, graduated from the San Carlos University School of Medicine and completed pediatric training at Roosevelt Hospital in Guatemala City. After a fellowship in perinatal/neonatal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, Lalo returned to Guatemala and soon was Head of the Newborn Section at Roosevelt Hospital, the nation’s largest hospital with 13,000 births per year. In 1991 he became Executive Director of the hospital.

Patient care and education were challenging, but Lalo persevered.

• He taught basic neonatal care, reorganized newborn services, and introduced mechanical ventilation, and the neonatal mortality rate fell from 26 to 13 of 1000 live births.
• He introduced the Kangaroo Mother Program and became a passionate advocate of breastfeeding, especially for low birth weight infants.
• He signed a US $9-million contract to remodel the maternity building (built in 1955), now one of the best maternity units in Latin America. • He was a founder and second president of the Guatemalan Perinatal/Neonatal Association.
• He organized an annual International Perinatal and Neonatal Course with participation of Baylor faculty as lecturers.
• He helped to institute national perinatal care guidelines and continuous medical education activities in newborn care.

In 1993, Dr. Cabrera-Meza left his country to join the Neonatology Section at Baylor where he now is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and is Medical Director of International Neonatology at Texas Children’s Hospital.

His international reach continues as a Regional Advisor in the Americas for the Pan–American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) strategy, and he coordinates the Guatemala elective rotation for Baylor pediatric residents and medical students.

For all he has done for his country and children of the world, the Guatemalan government gave Dr. Cabrera-Meza the Orden Dr Rodolfo Robles, the highest national award in the field of medicine and health care (April 1996) and the Orden del Quetzal en el Grado de Gran Cruz, equivalent to the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (December 1999). Also, the Pediatric House Staff has honored him with the Outstanding Teaching Attending Award (May 1997), and the Department of Pediatrics gave him the Baylor Pediatric Award of Excellence in Teaching (August 1998).

Dr. Cabrera-Meza has been dedicated to teaching and patient care and continues to influence the lives of his students, peers, and patients worldwide.