13/11/2025
More womens success stories
In a New York delivery room in 1952, silence filled the air. A baby had just been born—blue, limp, and without a sound. For a moment, despair hung heavy in the room. The attending physicians hesitated, uncertain whether to continue their attempts to revive the newborn.
Then, a steady, calm voice rose above the panic: “Let’s score the baby.”
It was Dr. Virginia Apgar's voice.
That simple phrase would change medicine forever.
Virginia Apgar had initially dreamed of becoming a surgeon, but in the 1940s, the doors to operating theaters rarely opened for women.
She was told no hospital would accept her. She refused to give up—she simply changed direction. She chose anesthesiology, a decision that would eventually save millions of lives.
Working in the maternity ward at Columbia-Presbyterian, Apgar observed newborns dying minutes after birth, and felt powerless. There were no criteria, no system—only guesswork.
So, one morning in 1952, she took a pen and a piece of paper and created something revolutionary: a simple, five-point test to assess heart rate, respiration, muscle tone, reflexes, and skin color.
She called it the “Apgar Score.”
The idea spread like wildfire. In less than ten years, virtually every hospital in the United States was using it. Infant mortality rates plummeted.
For the first time, doctors had a universal language to assess life, and countless newborns, who might previously have been considered hopeless, were saved.
But Virginia did not stop there. She earned a degree in Public Health, joined the March of Dimes, and became a global advocate for mothers and babies.
When asked how she managed to forge a path in a world dominated by men, she smiled and famously replied:
“Women are like tea bags—you don’t know how strong they are until they’re in hot water.”
Dr. Virginia Apgar passed away in 1974, yet her presence is felt in every delivery room on earth.
Every two seconds, somewhere in the world, a newborn takes its first breath—and thanks to her simple system, countless lives are saved.
She is the unseen patron saint of neonatology, a woman who sought a way forward when others saw only despair.
Her score remains a silent, two-minute evaluation, a universal, enduring lagacy to a compassionate mind that refused to accept defeat.
The Apgar Score is not just a test; it is a permanent tribute to a pioneer who used a piece of paper and a sharp mind to redefine the standard of care for every new life.
>We Are Human Angels<
Authors
Awakening the Human Spirit
We are the authors of 'We Are Human Angels,' the book that has spread a new vision of the human experience and has been spontaneously translated into 14 languages by readers.
We hope our writing sparks something in you!
