The Kagman Community Health Center marked its second anniversary yesterday morning with a small get-together with staff, lawmakers, government officials, and health providers.<\/p>\n
The center\u2019s executive director, Vince Castro, said it is a great achievement to turn the old juvenile detention center in just two years into a successful and prospering health center for the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though this is our second anniversary, KCHC actually has been applying for the grant since 2003. That is when the vision came out to have a community health center here on Saipan. They chose this area and it was renovated into the health center it is today,\u201d Castro said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not successful by itself; it is the community\u2019s collaboration,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Lt. Gov. Ralph DLG Torres, who spoke on behalf of Gov. Eloy S. Inos, said the center is a good opportunity for advancing healthcare for the community of Kagman, but in reality it is actually an opportunity to advance healthcare for the whole island.<\/p>\n
Because of the success of KCHC, Torres said the Inos administration is working on expanding the same model to Rota and Tinian.<\/p>\n
Castro noted that they finally got their first grant in 2012; back then, it was only $608,000. In 2013, it went up $650,000 and from 2014 to this year it totaled $984,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a big jump from the beginning. There will be more to come in the future,\u201d Castro said.<\/p>\n
KCHC board chair Velma Palacios said it was an honor for KCHC to finally open after almost 10 years of waiting. Palacios said she was already a board member before KCHC came into play back in 2002.<\/p>\n
Castro and Palacios said that they have partnered with Commonwealth Office on Transit Authority to provide patients transportation services, due to some patients missing their appointments.<\/p>\n
They are now looking at extending and expanding their services in Kagman with additional buildings since they don\u2019t just serve the patients from Kagman but also those from other villages.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to improve KCHC\u2019s access to the community and its clients because providing all levels of care and the quality of care is necessary,\u201d Palacios said.<\/p>\n
Other officials who attended the celebration were Reps. Larry Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan), Ed Propst (Ind-Saipan), Francis Taimanao (Ind-Saipan), and Ralph Yumul (Ind-Saipan).<\/p>\n
Everyone is welcome at the Kagman Community Health Center, even those who reside outside Kagman. To make an appointment or to get more information, call 256-5242.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Kagman Community Health Center marked its second anniversary yesterday morning with a small get-together…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[285,3778,3779],"class_list":["post-199058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-kchc","tag-velma-palacios","tag-vince-castro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}