By Debby Sy and Alexander de las Alas Padilla

Commissioner Mary Ann F. Mendoza — the career public servant who made tobacco industry an integrity problem, not just a health issue
11 January 1950 – 14 September 2026, Manila, Philippines

Commissioner Mary Ann F. Mendoza — “Comm May” to the many who worked with her — passed away on 14 September 2026. She used her standing as a commissioner of a constitutional body with authority over every civil servant in the Philippines, to protect them from tobacco and tobacco industry interference.

Comm May was a unique figure in tobacco control: Over forty years in government made her a career public servant whose expertise was the civil service and its integrity. She worked in economic planning, labour, the Office of the President, Civil Service Commission over her long career.

She believed the tobacco industry harms not only health, but also public integrity. Comm May recognized how public officers could be influenced by the tobacco industry into making bad health policies. As a commissioner of the civil service, she realized she could improve the standards of public office by applying the discipline of the civil service.

Comm May first learned about the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Article 5.3 at a meeting of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) in 2008. This was where we first met her. She was appalled to learn that the Philippine tobacco industry was the strongest lobby in Asia. She agreed to form a committee, where we both took important roles co-chairing and serving as its secretariat, representing the health ministry and civil society organisations. In 2010, that partnership produced a policy to Protect the Bureaucracy from Tobacco Industry Interference, binding every government official in the Philippines rather than a single ministry. This was the world’s first comprehensive whole-of-government policy on Article 5.3. This policy has been referenced by the World Health Organization and other institutions, and it sparked global interest in dedicated Article 5.3 policies, which other countries went on to adopt. She insisted that the policy be adopted along with a 100% Smoke Free government workspace policy that surpassed national law.

Although many lucrative government consultancies were available to her upon retiring from the Civil Service in 2013, Comm May took the reins of HealthJustice on a volunteer basis. She undertook this responsibility despite her chronic health conditions. HealthJustice is a public health think tank that aims to bridge the gap between health and law to empower Filipinos to make healthy choices. Civil society was the richer for her stewardship at HealthJustice. She applied principles of Article 5.3 to HealthJustice first and raised the bar for civil society. She was a mentor who helped public health advocates navigate the bureaucracy to achieve their goals, an inspiration to many, and tenacious to the end.

From her position in civil society, Comm May continued to fight tobacco industry interference, collaborating with the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control and SEATCA. It was from there that she saw to it that the civil service policies would outlive her tenure in government. This included smoke-free government offices and a requirement for civil servants aspiring to high-level positions to disclose and divest tobacco industry ties. The “No Deal with the Tobacco Industry” poster is still visible in government offices today. Her attitude was that as long as the industry would not stop interfering, why should she?

Sadly, it was the industry’s signature disease that took her. We lost Comm May to lung cancer. Although she never smoked, she breathed secondhand smoke in government offices for decades, while the industry lobbied against national smoke-free workplace laws. Thanks to Comm May, -civil servants are protected from toxic air at work, and the public service has rules of integrity to defend policy against tobacco industry interference.

Tobacco control has lost a special champion. Comm May was a career civil servant who understood the tobacco industry not only as a health problem but as an integrity problem, and who used the authority of her office to protect public servants and public policy.

Farewell, dear Comm May. We will miss you deeply.

Authors:
Deborah K. Sy, Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control and former Executive Director of Health Justice
Alexander de las Alas Padilla, Corporate Secretary, HealthJustice and former Undersecretary of the Department of Health