For years, Dr. Nenita Lanaria Suarez treated patients with lung disease while her husband, Dr. Ramon U. Suarez, practiced urology in Pennsylvania. Their medical specialties were different, but their work eventually came together in a project that took them back to the Philippines: making family-planning services available to people who could not afford them.
In 2001, the Suarezes joined engineer Robert “Bob” Kiamco and his wife, pediatrician Dr. Benita Kiamco, to organize a no-scalpel vasectomy mission in Cebu using their own money. The four established No-Scalpel Vasectomy International the following year. Ramon became its president and Nenita its vice president. The nonprofit supplied instruments, trained physicians and offered procedures free of charge.
Their shared work grew out of two distinct medical careers.
Nenita was born in Oroquieta City, Misamis Occidental, the seventh of nine children of Lucia Uy and Melecio Lanaria. She graduated magna cum laude from Southwestern University’s medical school in Cebu City in 1962 and placed third in the Philippine medical board examination the following year.
After moving to the United States, she completed an internship and internal medicine residency in Baltimore, followed by fellowship training in pulmonary disease in Philadelphia. At the veterans hospital in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, she directed respiratory therapy and the pulmonary function laboratory, among other programs. She also taught at Penn State Hershey Medical Center and became a fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians.
Ramon, a urologist, practiced for more than 30 years in Lebanon and Hershey. He was certified by the American Board of Urology, became a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and taught at Penn State’s College of Medicine.
After hearing about a no-scalpel vasectomy technique at a medical meeting in 1989, Ramon traveled to China the next year to train with Dr. Li Shunqiang, who developed it. Back in Pennsylvania, he taught the procedure to other physicians and urology residents.
The training later became central to the couple’s work in the Philippines. At the first Cebu mission in 2001, Ramon performed nearly 100 vasectomies, according to the nonprofit’s history. A second mission followed in 2002. The organization went on to support local providers so services would not depend solely on visiting medical teams. Nenita helped organize the effort and participated in its clinical work.
Both also served on medical missions with the Bisaya Medical Association. Nenita held leadership roles in the association and later led the Southwestern University Alumni Association USA. Her humanitarian work extended beyond medicine, including Habitat for Humanity projects in the Philippines and South Korea. She also supported wells in her hometown and medical facilities and equipment in Cebu.
Ramon carried the family-planning work to other countries, including Haiti and Kenya. World Vasectomy Day gave him a lifetime achievement award in 2017 for his work providing procedures, training doctors and encouraging men to take part in family-planning decisions. In 2013, he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and raised a banner for the nonprofit and World Vasectomy Day.
The Suarezes raised three sons — Ramon Jr., Ronald and Robert — and later retired to Naples, Florida. Their work as a couple remains closely linked to the nonprofit they founded. It also reflects what each brought to it: Nenita’s career in pulmonary medicine, teaching and humanitarian service, and Ramon’s work as a surgeon, educator and family-planning advocate.
