The Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) reveals that 87.1% of the country’s population resides within 10 kilometres of a health facility.
While urban areas exhibit near-universal coverage of 99%, rural areas demonstrate a lower level of access, with only 75.3% of the population residing within this proximity.
This comes as Namibia’s National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) hosts 530 mapped health facilities, including 49 hospitals, 60 health centres, and 421 clinics.
These are distributed across 38 digitally mapped health districts.
Windhoek Health District leads with the highest percentage of health facilities (11.1%), followed by Katima Mulilo (7.2%) and Engela (4.5%). Tsumkwe ranks lowest, with only 0.8% of the facilities.
“At regional level Khomas had the highest proportion of the population within a 10-kilometre radius at 96.8%, followed by Oshana at 96.7% and Kavango East at 95.0% respectively. Omaheke and Kunene regions had the lowest population within the 10-kilometre radius at 59.4% and 59.8% respectively,” said NSA’s Executive for GIS and NSDI Coordination Alex Mudabeti.
He further explained that population proximity to health facilities varies significantly across the country.
Communities of the Hardap face the greatest challenges, with some traveling as far as 119.9 kilometres to access care.
This highlights the vast, sparsely populated nature of areas such as //Kharas, Hardap, and Kunene. In contrast, population-dense districts like Windhoek and Engela have higher accessibility.
The health facility-to-population ratio further underscores these disparities. Oshana has the highest ratio of 1 health facility for every 9,617 persons, followed by Khomas at 1:8,383.
Regions such as //Kharas and Kunene have better ratios, with one health facility for every 3,330 and 3,552 persons, respectively.
Overall, Namibia’s health infrastructure aligns well with population distribution, as indicated by the geographic centers of both population and health facilities being in the Otjozondjupa Region.
Etunda Clinic is identified as the most centrally located health facility nationally.
“Generally, Namibia’s health facilities are well planned around the population distribution. At national level, both health facilities and population had their geographic mean centers of their distribution in Otjozondjupa Region, Etunda Clinic being the most central health facility in the country,” he said.
