Health in Namibia

rdf:langString Health in Namibia

rdf:langString The health status of Namibia has increased steadily since independence, and the government does have focus on health in the country and seeks to make health service upgrades. As a guidance to achieve this goal, The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and World Health Organization (WHO) recently published the report "Namibia: State of the Nation's Health: Findings from the Global Burden of Disease. The report backs the fact that Namibia has made steady progress in the last decades when it comes to general health and communicable diseases, but despite this progress, HIV/AIDS still is the major reason for low life expectancy in the country. Namibia is an upper-middle-income country. It has a dual system of public (serving 83% of the population) and private (17%) health care providers. In the financial year 2013/2014 Government and private health expenditure combined accounted for 8.9% of the country's Gross Domestic Product, compared to the world average of 9.9% of GDP in 2014. The Human Rights Measurement Initiative finds that Namibia is fulfilling 74.8% of what it should be fulfilling for the right to health based on its level of income. When looking at the right to health with respect to children, Namibia achieves 88.0% of what is expected based on its current income. In regards to the right to health amongst the adult population, the country achieves only 66.2% of what is expected based on the nation's level of income. Namibia falls into the "very bad" category when evaluating the right to reproductive health because the nation is fulfilling only 70.0% of what the nation is expected to achieve based on the resources (income) it has available.