Expert: greater focus needed on disease prevention
Parties' pre-election platforms promise to improve healthcare, but experts say more attention should go to disease prevention, since Latvia's public health indicators are twice as bad as the European average.
Ahead of the upcoming elections, several parties have made extensive healthcare promises in their platforms. These include pledges to shorten waiting lines for specialists, increase funding for the sector, raise medical staff salaries, and make health services more accessible to the public.
However, industry experts warn that the problems within the healthcare system run far deeper than what individual promises can resolve. This is underscored by data on the population's overall health, which show that Latvia's indicators are roughly twice as poor as the European Union average.
Prevention as the priority
Experts emphasize that the greatest attention should be directed specifically at disease prevention, rather than solely at improving access to treatment services. Strengthening preventive measures could, in the long run, reduce the overall burden on the healthcare system and gradually improve public health indicators, which currently lag significantly behind the European average.
The promises made by parties suggest that healthcare remains one of the most pressing topics for both the public and politicians. Still, it remains an open question whether the planned measures — increased funding, higher salaries, and shorter waiting lines — can address the system's deeper, long-standing problems, which are also highlighted by comparisons with the rest of Europe.
