There is a difficult conversation taking place in Namibia about healthcare.
Across social media and in public discourse, incidents involving nurses and other healthcare professionals are attracting intense attention. Some of these incidents are deeply concerning. Patients deserve to be treated with dignity. Families deserve to have their concerns heard. Healthcare professionals who engage in negligence, abuse, misconduct or unethical behaviour must be held accountable. But as the public conversation grows louder, I believe we should pause and ask a more uncomfortable question: Are we genuinely trying to understand and improve healthcare, or are we increasingly becoming comfortable with finding individuals to blame?
I ask this question not to defend misconduct, and certainly not to silence patients. I ask it because I believe Namibia deserves a healthcare conversation that is more thoughtful than outrage alone. The anger is understandable, but what are we actually angry about? When a patient has a bad experience in a healthcare facility, their frustration is real. Nobody should be made to feel insignificant because they are poor. Nobody should be shouted at when they are frightened or in pain. Nobody should be denied appropriate care because of prejudice, arrogance or negligence. Healthcare is built on trust, and when that trust is broken, people have every right to demand answers. We should therefore never dismiss legitimate complaints simply because they are directed at healthcare professionals.
But there is an important distinction between hearing a complaint and deciding guilt. A video on social media may show what happened in one moment. It may not show what happened before the camera was switched on. It may not show the patient’s clinical condition, the preceding interactions, the staff’s workload, the instructions given, the resources available at the time, or what happened afterwards.
One incident may have many possible causes. One of the greatest dangers in healthcare discussions is our tendency to reduce complicated events to simple explanations. A patient experiences poor service. Someone must be responsible. A nurse is visible.
Therefore, the nurse must be the problem. Sometimes that conclusion may be correct. Sometimes an individual healthcare professional genuinely failed in their responsibility and should answer for it. But healthcare delivery is rarely that simple. A nurse works within a broader environment involving staffing, workload, equipment, medication availability, supervision, communication, management, clinical protocols, training and the organisation of services. These factors do not excuse misconduct. They provide context that may help us understand why something happened and, importantly, how to prevent it from happening again. Namibia has evidence that these pressures are real. In 2025, the minister of health and social services reported that the ministry was operating at approximately 50% of its required staffing capacity, with more than 11 700 approved positions needing to be filled and an estimated cost of more than N$4.6 billion. The minister warned that the shortage was placing immense pressure on healthcare workers.
Research conducted in Namibia has also documented the relationship between workload, inadequate resources, workplace pressures and nurse wellbeing. A 2026 study examining nurse retention identified excessive workloads related to staffing shortages, inadequate resources and limited management support among important factors affecting nurses’ working experiences. This is not an argument for lowering standards. It is an argument for understanding the environment in which standards are expected to be maintained.
In March 2026, the Namibia Nurses Union publicly raised concerns about what it described as a growing trend of members of the public filming and photographing healthcare workers and patients inside public healthcare facilities. This is an important conversation to have. Social media has democratised ordinary people’s ability to speak. It can expose genuine wrongdoing. It can give patients a platform when they feel unheard. It can force institutions to pay attention to issues that might otherwise have been ignored. That is valuable. But social media also has a darker side.
A person’s face can be circulated to thousands of people before an investigation has taken place. An allegation can become a verdict. A moment of frustration can become a permanent digital record. A healthcare professional can be publicly humiliated before all the facts are known. The same principle that protects a patient from being ignored should protect a healthcare professional from being condemned without a fair assessment of what happened
The brighter side is that Namibia is not starting this conversation from zero. In June 2026, the Ministry of Health and Social Services introduced a new complaints-management system intended to improve accountability, responsiveness and service delivery at public health facilities.
The framework establishes formal processes for receiving, documenting, categorising and resolving complaints, including accelerated escalation of high-risk allegations involving abuse, negligence or deaths linked to healthcare services. That is the kind of development we should encourage. A complaint should not disappear. A patient should not have to become viral before being heard. A healthcare worker should not have to fear that a complaint automatically means guilt. The goal should be a process in which patients can speak, healthcare workers can respond, institutions can investigate, and appropriate action can follow. That is accountability. That is the healthcare system we should envision and build together as a nation.
*Dr. Likius T. Hailaula is a medical doctor, published author and public speaker.
The post Opinion – Let’s stop the witch hunt, let’s fix healthcare together appeared first on New Era.
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