Veterans Affairs Executive Director Ruth Coleman said they are still planning for the commemoration of Veterans Day on Nov. 11, but the ribbon cutting for the clinic will definitely take place this year.
“It will be definitely after the Veterans Day celebration, or maybe after Thanksgiving,” Coleman said.
The ribbon-cutting of the clinic will just be a formality as the clinic located at the MH2 Building in Puerto Rico has been serving the medical needs of veterans in the CNMI for the past months.
Veterans as well as servicemembers that need medical care need not go off-island to avail of basic health care needs.
Dr. Kendall Gladding, a psychologist at Dr. Norma Ada’s clinic at the Marianas Associates of the Pacific, has also been seeing veterans since last year.
“It won’t be long before the VA clinic will be formally opened. It will happen this year,” Coleman said.
The opening of the VA clinic on Saipan took almost 10 years of waiting, finalizing details and tying up loose ends.
Over a thousand veterans call the CNMI their home, with about 900 of them living on Saipan. The rest reside on Tinian and Rota.
