Latvia

Health systems in transition
Latvia
The Department of European Affairs and International Cooperation deals
with all other kinds of cooperation with European countries that are not related
to the use of EU funds. It is concerned with bilateral cooperation with countries
within the region, as well as with following up on Latvia’s obligations in its
participation in international projects, committees, bodies, etc., as well as
cooperation with international organizations such as the United Nations and
WHO. It also consults with other Ministry departments on legal issues.
The Departments of Communications, Administration and Law are concerned
with public relations and media, administrative matters and internal legislative
acts, respectively.
Institutions under the Ministry of Health
There are numerous organizations in which the Ministry of Health has a
supervisory and governing role, the most significant of which are listed in
Table 2.1. Some are directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry’s various
departments (column 1). There are many other institutions (mainly provider
institutions) under the authority of the Ministry of Health, which have the legal
status of capital companies (public limited stock companies or public limited
companies) in which the Ministry of Health is 100% shareholder (column 2).
The position of these institutions within the overall structure of the health care
system can be seen in Table 2.1.
This section describes the functions of some of the agencies under the
jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health (shown in the first column of Table
2.1).
The Public Health Agency was created in 2002 on the basis of the former
National Environmental Health Centre (known during Soviet times as the
Sanitary Epidemiological Station). In addition to the functions of monitoring
and controlling infectious diseases, the strategic idea for the future development
of the agency is to deal with noncommunicable disease control and general
public health monitoring. In 2007 several government agencies with public
health surveillance and disease prevention and health promotion functions
were incorporated into the Public Health Agency: these included the State
AIDS Prevention Centre, State Agency of Sexually Transmitted and Skin
Diseases and partially the Agencies of Mental Health and Psychiatry and the
State Narcology Centre.
During the Latvian health system reforms of the 1990s, such functions as
the surveillance and control of epidemic safety; assessment and control of
environmental factors that affect health; safety of drinking water; marketing
and utilization of chemical substances and chemical products; and safety in the
utilization of cosmetic products were removed from the Public Health Agency
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