Health and Social Services Minister, Dr. Kalumbi Shangula, says Namibia is making steady progress in the expansion of health care services to far-flung rural areas.

Dr. Shangula is currently assessing outreach and visibility programmes aimed at increasing access to quality health care for vulnerable people in the Kunene Region.

Ensuring access to quality primary health care services is critical to strengthening the public health system. 

Namibia has achieved a TB treatment success rate of 87%, 3% short of its 90% target.

Minister of Health and Social Services, Dr. Kalumbi Shangula, revealed this at the World TB Day held at Luderitz in the Kharas Region. 

With the eleventh highest TB incidence in the world, the World Health Organisation (WHO) listed Namibia as a highly TB-burdened country. 

Outgoing representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to Namibia, Dr. Charles Sagoe-Moses, has emphasised the ongoing need to further strengthen investments in skilled and community health workers.

Namibia has not achieved the malaria elimination goal, and cases have more than doubled compared to the 2022 end-line target.

This is despite a marked reduction in the number of malaria cases in the country.

Malaria cases decreased by 95%, from over 66,000 in 2017 to 3,000 in 2019.

According to the World Health Organisation, however, an upsurge in the number of cases has been observed since then, reaching above 13,000 per year in 2020 and 2021, while in 2022 there was a slight decrease at around 11,000.