EDITORIAL: Health procurement - we need the full truth

Health minister Esperance Luvindao has blown the lid off one of Namibia’s most scandalous rackets. Speaking on The Agenda, airing this Sunday, she revealed how middlemen were allegedly pocketing N$450 million to procure medicine worth only N$100 million. Her drastic move to cut out middlemen from clinical and pharmaceutical procurement, she says, was born of necessity - because the system was rotten to the core.

But that is not the main issue for now. The real scandal is how her predecessors oversaw this mess and simply walked away unscathed. Even if the minister’s figures were exaggerated, the broader truth is undeniable: Namibia’s health procurement system was reduced to a feeding trough for looters, aided by insiders at the very top.

But Luvindao must now move beyond broad strokes. She owes Namibians the hard numbers. Who signed off on inflated tenders? Who authorised payments for medicine that cost multiples of its real value? It is not enough to paint middlemen as the villains of the story. They could not have thrived without collusion from within government - officials who greenlit the daylight robbery of the state.

This cannot be swept into the dustbin of history. Namibians demand accountability. Those who presided over this theft of life-saving medicine must face consequences. A presidential commission of inquiry is the bare minimum if government is serious about transparency.

The days of quietly moving on while billions vanish must end. The health sector is too critical, too sacred, to be left at the mercy of greed. If we allow this to be treated as just another bygone scandal, then the very health of the nation has been traded for kickbacks. Every cent lost to corruption in this sector is measured not in dollars, but in lives.