By George Sanzila
SINGALAMWE – Despite government having the financial capacity to train health specialists, more than 30 district hospitals in the country do not have a single Namibian doctor or pharmacist employed by the government.
The country instead relies heavily on expatriates, a concern that the Minister of Health and Social Services, Dr Richard Kamwi, felt needs urgent attention.
Kamwi said this recently when handing over ICT equipment donated by the Namibia Institute of Pathology (NIP) to Singalamwe Combined School.
“In over 30 district hospitals, we don’t have a single Namibian doctor or pharmacist employed by the Namibian government. We are experiencing a shortage of skilled personnel in our country. Here we are talking about experts in the field of public health,” stated the health minister.
Kamwi however noted that in government’s efforts to rectify the situation a medical school was recently established with health training centres that have been rolled out countrywide.
“This is the reason we established a medical school in Windhoek. We have also established six training centres for enrolled nurses. Since independence we have been training health personnel but because we are sparsely populated coverage remains a challenge,” he stated.
According to Kamwi, government continues to avail resources needed to train health specialists but attracting qualifying students has proven to be difficult.
“Our dream is to bring health services closer to the people. Government is giving us free education. We have resources to send young people to foreign countries to be trained as doctors but we don’t have those people. We need young people with science subjects to qualify for this training,” said Kamwi.
He said it pained him that Namibia still depends on expatriates more than two decades after independence.
“Namibia is independent and it pains me that after 24 years we still import expertise. We can only rectify this through education,” said Kamwi.
At the same occasion he also announced that Katima Mulilo Hospital would become an intermediate hospital by 2018.
“Come 2018, Katima Mulilo hospital will become a regional referral hospital just like Oshakati and other hospitals,” he said to loud applause.