Maria Fernanda Escobar Vidarte

Maria Fernanda is from Colombia. She trained in Obstetrics and Gynecology and completed her Clinic Epidemiology Master at the University de la Frontera in Chile, as well a Fellowship in Critical Care and Intensive Care Medicine in Cali, Colombia, and at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, and a master degree in Social Innovation at the Universidad ICECI in Cali, Colombia.

She has represented Latin America at the Figo Committee for Safe Motherhood and Newborn Health and is a consultant to the Ministry of Health of Colombia. She believes that improving maternal health and reproductive and sexual rights will help empower women and positively affect the national growth rate. Currently, she is the chief physician at the Global Equity in Health Unit and the Hospital Padrino strategy in Fundación Valle del Lili, Cali, Colombia. As a former professor at the University ICESI in Cali, Colombia, she believes in educating health workers at all skill levels with no technical competencies and humanization and in the power of research as a generation of knowledge and change.

With extensive experience in managing critical care obstetrics patients, Maria Fernanda has worked in international programs focused on strategies to reduce maternal and perinatal deaths, especially in low- and middle-income countries.