By Surihe Gaomas WINDHOEK A critical shortage of medical staff, non-compliance of private sector companies with hospital tenders, electricity blackouts at some State hospitals and lack of adequate medical equipment are just some of the many challenges facing the Ministry of Health and Social Services. Although the ministry gets the second largest share of the national budget after the Ministry of Education, it still grapples with these constraints on a yearly basis. The biggest bottleneck remains the critical shortage of qualified medical personnel. “We just have a very serious human resources constraint,” said the ministry’s Permanent Secretary Dr Kalumbi Shangula at a recent press briefing. Since Namibia does not have a medical school, the ministry recruits interns mostly from South Africa and from among Namibians who were trained abroad. Currently, the orthopaedics department at the Katutura State Hospital has no medical interns. Usually under normal circumstances three medical interns were attached to this department. However, it appears that all the medical interns working at the Windhoek Hospital Complex have already completed their two-month rotation through the orthopaedics domain. They have now been transferred to other departments. “The bottleneck is caused by the fact that the number of medical interns that started their internship in the two hospitals this year is lower than what is required to cover all the main specialist departments,” said Shangula. Medical interns are usually only available for one year upon completing their medical studies. In an effort to address the situation, medical superintendents of both the Katutura and Windhoek State hospitals have been urged to urgently seek additional intern recruits for this department. Shangula said if these interns were not found, additional medical officers would be appointed and be held against vacant medical intern posts. While the orthopaedic department is supposed to have four medical officers, there is only one medical officer employed on a full-time basis alongside two Cuban volunteers. One additional medical officer has now been allocated to the department with immediate effect. For a long time, the State hospitals have been criticised by the public for the dirty environment with stories being told of cockroaches and bats found in some parts of these health facilities. Fears are high that such an unhygienic environment is contrary to the health needs of the patients as well as the medical staff. On cleanliness, Shangula said that this was a complex issue that needed the attention of all Namibians. “It is an irony that whereas Namibia is reputed to be one of the cleanest countries in the world, the hospital premises are reportedly dirty,” said Shangula. Even the ministry’s outsourcing of catering and cleaning services to the private sector has proved ineffective. “Most of the services we outsourced to the private sector are not rendered in a satisfactory manner. But when the patients are fed with poor food or there are no medicines in some health facilities, the ministry takes the blame,” he said. Welcoming the latest initiatives by individuals and the private sector to help the ministry to improve on its prevailing conditions, Shangula said that such actions were a step in the right direction as “health is a shared responsibility”.