Officials: In a Crisis the State Cannot Help Everyone at Once, So People Must Prepare
At a conference in Rēzekne on healthcare resilience in crisis conditions, Latvian officials said help will not reach everyone simultaneously, so residents must prepare individually. A 72-hour kit and first-aid courses were mentioned.
Representatives of Latvian state services said at a conference in Rēzekne that in a crisis residents must partly take responsibility for their own health and safety, because the state will not be able to respond to every call at the same time. The conference focuses on the continuity of healthcare services and the availability of medical assistance and medicines in emergency conditions.
Colonel Arvis Zīle, head of the Crisis Management Centre at the State Chancellery, said it will never be possible to provide a medic for every person immediately after a call, or an electrician at every pole. He explained that in a crisis there will be far more incidents, injuries and fires, and the state will not be able to react to all of them instantly. In his view, everyone should be ready: a 72-hour bag with critical supplies, medicines and dressing materials is needed at home, and it would be sensible to refresh first-aid training. The state will try to help, but cannot help everyone at once, Zīle said.
Motivating staff
Liene Cipule, director of the Emergency Medical Service, was asked how to motivate employees in emergencies. She acknowledged that only soldiers and national guard members know for certain that they will be ordered to take part in a crisis, while in the civilian sector motivation largely rests on the understanding that the situation must be handled together. She urged looking at the question through the lens of a national security culture, noting that services, the state, municipalities and family doctors are all in the same boat.
Dace Roga, deputy head of the Health Ministry's sector human resources development division, pointed to the question of critical staff in medical institutions and whether they know where to report. Hospital staff take part in exercises to understand how to act in a crisis at their own institution, or at a site closer to where they live.
Health literacy
Baiba Ziemele, head of the Latvian Patient Organisation Network, stressed that residents' health literacy is very low, so reintroducing health education in schools should be considered.
Why Rēzekne
The conference brings together leaders of Latvia's healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors and representatives of state institutions and European-level organisations. Organisers deliberately chose Rēzekne: in Latgale, on Latvia's eastern border, healthcare resilience and medicine availability in a crisis can quickly become a matter of national security. They also cite incidents in Latgale involving drones that entered Latvian airspace.
