The Ministry of Health and Social Services has started with the construction of Windhoek District Hospital in the Moses Garoeb Constituency.

The hospital is expected to be completed within eight months.

On Tuesday, construction of phase one of the hospital construction started in Havana.

The Minister of Health and Social Services, Dr. Esperance Luvindao, stated that Namibians are too few to not enjoy world-class healthcare.

She noted that the lack of a district hospital in the capital has caused a burden on the existing healthcare system.

"We do not have a district hospital. And so this will, of course, be the first district hospital for us. And this has obviously placed a very troubling reality, because this means that a lot of the pressure is directly now on the Katutura Intermediate Hospital as well as the Windhoek Central Hospital, which for many years have taken up a lot of the burden, particularly for people within the commerce region, and not just that, keeping in mind that because of the lack of your intermediate hospitals in various regions, this now means that not only have these hospitals catered towards the commerce region, but they have catered towards a lot of the other regions in terms of patients that they refer on a daily basis to the commerce region."

The Executive Director in the Health Ministry, Penda Ithindi, says that the new hospital will help meet the demands of the growing city population by expanding access to healthcare services to city dwellers and patients from the region.

Ithindi says that the hospital will also create job opportunities.

"The commencement of Phase one works here and now for the much-needed Bend Hook District Hospital is no doubt a critical addition to addressing the service, the hard service access needs in the public health sector, and the data speak for themselves. Look at the data on the demand for services in our public facilities, be it in Vendor, the capital city, in commerce regions, or in the country at large. The facility utilisation rate, or even for simplicity, the hospital bed occupancy rate, averages above 100% if you look at it nationally."