She served as Secretary of the Department of Health in the Philippines, taking office in January 2010 to replace Dr. Francisco Duque III after his appointment as chairperson of the Civil Service Commission.

One of her contributions as Secretary of Health was the DOH-FDA Administrative Order 2010-0008 (issued on March 18, 2010), which mandated all companies to include in all advertisements, promotional, and/or sponsorship activities or materials concerning food/dietary supplements the following phrase: Fearing that the new directive may impact food/dietary supplement companies in a negative way, the Chamber of Herbal Industries of the Philippines (composed of over 65 firms in the country engaged in the manufacture, research and distribution of these products) filed a petition for injunction against it at the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch No.

[2][3] In January 2010, the National Bureau of Investigation filed a libel complaint on behalf of Secretary Cabral after a blog post under the pseudonym "Ella Rose delos Santos" alleged "...that she [Sec.

Cabral] and the DSWD employees are corrupt, having diverted donated goods for personal gain at the expense of the typhoon victims and [are] downright incompetent."

According to a report by Reuters, the United States military ran a propaganda campaign to spread disinformation about the Sinovac Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, including using fake social media accounts to spread the disinformation that the Sinovac vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients and was therefore haram under Islamic law.