NIP was established as a state-owned commercial entity in August 2000 and started operations on 1st December 2000 with the objective to provide medical laboratory services to all health facilities in Namibia and beyond. Having started off with 23 laboratories at inception country-wide, which were taken over from the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS) under severe human resource, infrastructural, technological and financial constraints, the company has expanded its service in terms of geographical coverage as well as test repertoire available at its now 37 laboratories a staff compliment of more than 300.

The growing challenges that are brought about by diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria has resulted in significant increase in the use of NIP laboratories by the health facilities over the years. For this reason, technical services have been organised in a way that supports professionally managed and well equipped laboratories supported by a state of the art laboratory information system.

One of the latest areas of focus is the establishment of the molecular diagnostic section that now operates a comprehensive diagnostic service based on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique.

NIP management has committed itself to a quality management system based on relevant standards (ISO/IEC 17025 and 15089). A full-fledged qualiy assurance unit is in place and serves to provide adaequate confidence to our clients about the quality of services that they are receiving from our facilities.

 

 

Services

NIP is the largest diagnostic pathology service in Namibia with a total of 37 medical laboratories serving 80% of country’s population.

NIP plays a major role in:

• Public health in Namibia through epidemiology, surveillance and outbreak response activities;
• The national Anti-retroviral Roll-out programme through CD4, viral load studies and HIV treatment monitoring;
• Provision of quality assurance for national VCT sites;
• Tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment monitoring;
• The screening of cervical cancer;
• Practical training of medical technicians, medical technologists and scientists ;

 

Scope of Services

• The Namibia Institute of Pathology (NIP) is the largest clinical pathology organisation in Namibia. The NIP has a national network of 37 medical laboratories and three (3) patient service centres (specimen collection sites) throughout the country. Through this network, NIP offers a broad range of clinical laboratory tests which are used by the medical professionals in patient diagnosis and the monitoring and treatment of diseases. Furthermore, NIP has developed special units based on specialised testing capabilities due to client requirements, such as oncology, HIV, immuno-histochemistry, HIV DNA PCR and viral load testing.
   
• In fulfilling the above, the Technical Department is supported from the central level by the following line divisions: 

- Diagnostic division
- Quality Assurance division
- Health and safety division