The Namibian capital Windhoek is a city that honours its heroes. Arriving from the south on the B1 highway, for example, a left turn takes you down Michelle McLean Drive, named for the former Miss Namibia who became the country’s first and only Miss Universe in 1992.
If you turn right, you will find yourself on Frankie Fredericks Street, named for a four-time Olympic silver medallist and the fastest Namibian in athletics history.
And about 850 meters down Frankie Fredericks Street, you’ll arrive outside Lady Pohamba Private Hospital (LPPH), whose name honours Namibia’s former First Lady, midwife and healthcare advocate Penehupifo ‘Penny’ Pohamba.
Already in distinguished company, once inside you will meet more exemplary individuals in the persons of clinical manager Dr Marsha Koekemoer, rehabilitation unit manager Sr Tanya Momberg, and Marelize Mentz, the hospital’s marketing and relations manager who just happens to have worn the title of Miss Namibia herself.
Dr Marsha has been here since day one. Recruited from the Western Cape, she joined Lady Pohamba in January 2016 and for nearly a decade led the emergency center while overseeing clinical governance as the facility expanded from 130 beds to 293. Plans to move back to the Cape’s famous beaches and winelands were shelved when she was invited to step into the role of Clinical Oversight Specialist this past August.
Sister Tanya was working in one of South Africa’s most sought-after retirement towns, and contemplating retirement herself, when she agreed to trade the Whale Coast’s mild climate and Blue Flag beaches for hot semi-arid Windhoek and 300 sunny days per year. She signed on for two years, and has stayed for 10 and counting.
Three years ago, she got invited on a field trip to rehabilitation facilities in the Western Cape, and when Namibia’s first rehab unit opened at Lady Pohamba in 2024, Sr Tanya was a natural choice to lead it. After decades on the frontlines of cardiology, oncology, surgery and the ICU, rehabilitation was an entirely new discipline, she says.
“It grabbed me,” she says, “the opportunity to put something back into the community.”
Having left the pageant world behind, Marelize had found her niche at the intersection of healthcare and communication, and joined LPPH three years ago. The hospital’s warm emotional climate is at least in part a reflection of her work; she loves being part of a journey that almost routinely goes the extra mile.
‘It’s precious time because it gives them hope’
Dr Marsha is LPPH’s stroke champion. Already familiar with Angels before moving to Windhoek, she welcomed them at the hospital in 2017. Training and simulations have helped the team trouble-shoot pathway delays, and the only thing that now stands between them and an Angels Award is patient volume. Only about half of stroke patients reach Lady Pohamba by ambulance, and many arrive outside the treatment window.
Namibia is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. Its three. Million inhabitants are spread across a land mass larger than France and Germany combined. Communities are separated by vast distances, and almost 70 percent of the national road network is made up of gravel roads.
Adding to the challenges, the national emergency number has fallen out of use due to low public awareness, although FAST Heroes implementation has lent impetus to a campaign to reinstate 112 as the official number for all emergency services. Last year, thanks to their support for the FAST Heroes mission and the 112 campaign, Dr Marsha and Martelize were finalists in the global FAST Heroes Awards.
At the opposite end of the stroke patient pathway is where you will find Sr Tanya demonstrating the difference 10 beds can make.
The LPPH rehabilitation unit is where life begins anew for the orthopedic patients and stroke survivors who are taken under Sr Tanya’s wing, their recovery supported by a customised medical and therapy program administered by a multi-disciplinary team. Team members meet early on Tuesdays to discuss patient progress, and family meetings take place on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
A stroke doesn’t only change patients’ lives. Their entire families experience shock, anxiety and grief, and the disruption of sudden shifts in relationship roles, and the physical demands of caregiving. The rehabilitation unit is where they will find the knowledge and support that will light their way.
The education takes time, Sr Tanya says. “But it is precious time because it gives them hope.”
‘I want people to know about us’
The daughter of a nurse, Marsha Koekemoer always loved biology.
When Marsha was in grade 11, her mother took her on a tour of the gritty reality in one of South Africa’s state hospitals, in an ultimately futile attempt to talk her out of studying medicine.
After graduating from the University of Free State in 2005, she likewise shrugged off attempts to dissuade her from expressing her passion for children in pediatrics. But, during a stint in the mining town of Kimberley, she watched one of the South Africa’s first emergency specialists defy protocol by thrombolysing a myocardial infarction in the ER.
“I thought she was hardcore,” Dr Marsha says.
It takes one to know one.
High-stakes decision making in a high-energy environment suits her competitive nature, and treating acute stroke is part of the adrenaline rush. Her master’s thesis in Emergency Medicine focused on the South African Triage Scale; she believes stroke should be included in the Red Discriminator List.
Mental toughness notwithstanding, empathy sits right behind her eyes as she recalls the impossible-to-forget case of an eight-year-old with devastating injuries.
With Sr Tanya, too, emotions lie close to the surface, especially when she recounts how her father foretold her entry into medicine. She was the most caring person he knew, he told his daughter as she prepared to leave school. “And a caring person should become a nurse.”
In the rehabilitation unit, that caring nature combined with positive energy, humour, and optimism, is just what the doctor ordered.
“I want people to know about us,” Sr Tanya says, “that we’re a family, a joyous environment, and our outcomes are phenomenal.”
Marelize shares the same desire for the world to see what happens inside the walls of LPPH.
“I see the involvement, not only from support staff, but from nurses going the extra mile,” she says. “They become the patient’s family member, celebrating milestones, and giving a bit of themselves every day.”
As the hospital’s new Clinical Oversight Specialist, Dr Marsha Koekemoer now has the opportunity to shape practice, influence culture, and drive improvement without asking for permission. Above all, her ambition is to ensure Lady Pohambe Private Hospital is recognized as a place of safety for patients.
“We want them to know that if they need help, this is a safe environment where their needs will be met, and they will leave better than they arrived.”
