ARMM Health Secretary Gets Prestigious Yorac Award

COTABATO CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / mar. 9, 2010) – The Manila Electric Railroad And Light Company and the University of the Philippines awarded Dr Kadil Sinolinding Jr, the Secretary of the Department of Health in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the prestigious Gawad Haydee Yorac Award for Outstanding Public Service because of his exemplary and venerable work on health service.

Sinolinding is the first Filipino Muslim to receive the esteemed award founded in honor of the late Haydee Yorac, who is considered to be among the country’s respectable and dedicated public servants, according to the ARMM’s Bureau of Public Information.

Now on its 4th year, the Gawad Haydee Yorac Award is conferred annually by Meralco in cooperation with the University of the Philippines to outstanding individual in public service whose personal qualities and personal lives are worth emulating, it said.

Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, the ARMM Executive Secretary, lauded Sinolinding for his works and for garnering the award. He said the dedicated doctor is a pride to the people of the ARMM and boosts the reputation of the incumbent regional leadership.

The award body cited Sinolinding’s devotion of his more than 20 years of professional career to helping over a hundred thousand individuals in different parts of Mindanao especially those in remote and depressed communities. He helped organized medical outreach missions to several areas in the provinces of Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Saranggani, Maguindanao and Sulu that others dared not visit.

He has also been known for his Vision 20/20 Cataract Charities Team which made eye surgery and other ophthalmologic services available even to those who do not have the means since 1991.

Sinolinding had been nominated to receive the award by Dr Angelo Ladub, an anesthesiologist at the Cotabato Regional and Medical Center in Cotabato City. (Becky de Asis contributed to this report)