Imagine Collapsing In Oshakati while visiting family from Windhoek.
You’re rushed to the Intermediate Hospital, unconscious and unable to communicate.
The doctors there have no idea you’re allergic to penicillin.
They don’t know about your heart condition or the medication you take daily.
Your complete medical history sits uselessly in a paper file 700 kilometres away at Katutura State Hospital.
This is not a hypothetical scenario. It is the daily reality of Namibia’s fragmented, paper-based public health system and it is putting lives at risk.
The problem runs deeper than geography.
Many Namibians are born in public hospitals, their first immunisations and childhood illnesses recorded in state facility files.
Later in life, as circumstances improve, they transition to private healthcare providers.
Others move in the opposite direction, starting with private care before finding themselves in a public emergency room after an accident or sudden illness.
CONSEQUENCES
In both cases, the two sectors simply do not communicate.
Your private GP in Windhoek has no access to the records from the state clinic where you were treated as a child.
The public hospital treating your emergency has no knowledge of the specialist care you’ve received privately.
Research confirms what many Namibians experience firsthand: our healthcare system operates on “fragmented systems” with “an absence of common patient identification numbers” and “a lack of agreed standards across systems and databases”.
Studies show that nearly 29% of patients cannot provide their medical records when visiting a new facility, and when patients are transferred between facilities, critical health information simply does not follow.
The consequences extend beyond inconvenience.
Without access to a patient’s medication history, doctors risk dangerous drug interactions.
Without knowing previous diagnoses, they may miss chronic conditions requiring ongoing management.
In emergency situations, this information gap can prove fatal.
The solution is both obvious and achievable: a unified digital health records system linked to every Namibian’s national identification number.
CONTINUITY OF CARE
Every citizen already possesses a unique identifier through our ID system.
By building an electronic health record platform around this existing infrastructure, one that bridges both public and private sectors we can ensure that a patient’s complete medical history is accessible at any healthcare facility nationwide.
Such a system would allow doctors to instantly access allergies, chronic conditions, and current medications regardless of where previous treatment occurred.
It would enable genuine continuity of care across a lifetime of healthcare interactions.
Most critically, it would save lives by giving healthcare providers the information they need precisely when they need it.
Namibia cannot achieve universal health coverage while our health information remains trapped in paper files that cannot cross regional or sectoral boundaries.
The time for a national digital health system is now. Our lives depend on it.
Job Angula writes on technology, governance, and digital transformation.
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