The whole article is available in Latvian www.lv.lv, but here you can read short interpretation of the article in English.
The functions of Public Health Agency
One of the Public Health Agency (SVA) functions is to monitor the situation of inhabitant’s health and to anticipate the potential risk factors.
Right now in Latvia is high level of heart and blood diseases, cancerous growth and mental diseases, high level of forcible deathas well. Number of above mentioned health issues are two or three times higher than in Europe.
Current functions of SVA have been developed just from 2002. That’s why SVA still are in process to make analyses on public health and what are affected factors. The main task to SVA is to work out the suggestions to public health policy. SVA have done a lot on epidemiological control of infection diseases. Less has been done on heart and blood disease prevention and this is the sphere were it is useful to take experience of other European countries as well to make assessments and finally to make political decisions.
What are the most important factors health is influenced by?
The experts in worldwide have come to conclusions that only 20% of health quality depends on health care, but 80% is influenced by social economical situation. The social economical factor is visible in Latvia right now. But health quality disimproves in all transition countries.
Currently the highest risk to health quality is poverty. Consequently the level of heart, blood and infection diseases increased. The low income of people limits access to healthy food and to health promotion activities (sports). That’s why public health policy should be cros-sectoral.
In 2001 The Health ministry accepted the public health strategy defining the responsibilities of each ministry. Lack of common perception precludes the effective implementation of puiblic health policy.
