Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and U.S. Interior Assistant Secretary Tony Babauta noted how the commonwealth is now blessed with a spacious and state of the art renal care facility as they also emphasized the importance of preventive care.
Fitial said “while we are celebrating the opening of this dialysis center, it is my hope that all our people will be committed to leading a healthy lifestyle and good nutrition habits so that we can decrease and eventually eliminate the need for dialysis treatment.”
For his part, Babauta said the “life-saving, blood filtering process is strenuous, expensive and comes with severe dietary and lifestyle restrictions.” So as a community, he said, “we need to really ramp up our efforts to talk about ways that we can work together to ensure families are eating right, buying locally, staying fit and limiting our salt and processed food intake.”
He added, “This is about cultivating a lifestyle that is health conscious, teaching our children about our rich taro and breadfruit eating traditions.”
Rep. Joseph M. Palacios, R-Saipan, was among the many lawmakers who attended the event. He noted that millions of dollars both federal and local have been spent to put up the facility but “I believe we should spend more on prevention programs.”
Having a multi-million-dollar facility, Palacios said does not mean “we can allow our people to continue unhealthy eating habits and get sick.”
In his remarks, Fitial paid tribute to the late Dr. Jose T. Villagomez.
“As we officially inaugurate this new dialysis center, I once again recognize one of our local pioneers in the medical profession whose name has been bestowed on this facility: the late Dr. Jose T. Villagomez,”
The governor said Villagomez certainly “was very well respected in our community and served many of our local families compassionately for many years.”
“He was a founding father of the Commonwealth Health Center and was the director of the CNMI Department of Public Health. In 1998, Dr. Villagomez moved to start this project, and today, we can appreciate the result of his vision. It was largely because of his initial efforts that this project has finally become a reality for our commonwealth,” Fitial said.
