Allexer Namundjembo
The Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) has revealed that 87.1% of the population lives within 10 kilometres of a health facility, with 99.0% of urban residents having access and only 75.3% in rural areas.
The National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), according to NSA CEO Alex Shimuafeni, currently hosts 530 health facilities that have mapped geographic locations, including 49 hospitals, 60 health centres, and 421 clinics.
Additionally, the infrastructure hosts 38 digitally mapped health district boundaries.
Shimuafeni added that Windhoek Health District has the highest proportion of mapped health facilities, accounting for 11.1% (59 out of 530), followed by Katima Mulilo at 7.2% (38 out of 530) and Engela at 4.5% (24 out of 530).
Tsumkwe has the lowest percentage, at just 0.8% (4 out of 530).
“The Windhoek Health District has 16.4% of the population, more than double that of Engela (6.5%), with Rosh Pinah having the lowest at 0.4%. Oshana has the highest health facility-to-population ratio at 1 facility per 9 617 people, while //Kharas has the lowest at 1 facility per 3 330 people,” Shimuafeni said.
The NSA also revealed that communities in the Hardap Region travel up to 119.9 kilometres to reach the nearest health facility, underscoring the sparsely populated nature of the country, particularly in the Kharas, Hardap, and Kunene regions.
In Hardap, the most distant locality, the population is just 63.
“Generally, Namibia’s health facilities are well planned around the population distribution. At the national level, both health facilities and the population have their geographic mean centres in the Otjozondjupa Region, with Etunda Clinic being the most central health facility in the country, Shimuafeni said.
Shimuafeni added that the ratios were calculated without scaling the data.
He explained that Oshana had the highest ratio, with one health facility for every 9 617 persons, followed by Khomas, which had a ratio of one health facility for every 8 383 persons.
He further stated that //Kharas had the lowest health facility-to-population ratio, with one health facility for every 3,330 persons, indicating the fewest number of persons per health facility, followed by Kunene, which had a ratio of one health facility for every 3 552 persons.
