This, according to the House committee on Health, Education and Welfare, should be one contingency measure that the Department of Public Health should consider to ensure smooth dialysis treatments.
The committee said there are other accredited clinics on island that have dialysis machines and they can take care of the dialysis patients for the meantime.
The hospital has 19 dialysis stations while the new facility has 27 units including two isolation rooms.
CHC facility administrator John T. Flores told the House Health, Education and Welfare committee during last Friday’s oversight hearing that the new hemodialysis facility has an underground water tank that collects reject water which is then pumped and recycled.
He added that a journal is also being kept to check and monitor the water quality and that a chemical analysis of the water is being done monthly at the dialysis wing.
“If the water does not meet the standard quality, we have to sanitize the system and that’s when we need to buy water from suppliers,” he said.
He added that the sanitizing process takes several hours.
When it is completed, Flores said they send samples to a laboratory to ensure that the water quality meets the standard.
“Otherwise, we must continue to use water from accredited sources,” he said.
Flores said they had a contract with two water suppliers on Saipan to supply them with water if the center’s reverse osmosis system fails.
But he said they were informed that they were not supposed to buy water from any supplier.
“We should have contingency measures, like relocation of patients to other accredited clinics while the sanitation process is ongoing,” Flores said.
But he said they have not relocated any patient yet.
