INDICATORS

LATVIA
Data availability by Country Report: 62% of ECHI shortlist indicators are available
in international data sources. The ECHI shortlist sections for which there are most data
missing are Health Status, Determinants of Health and Health Services.
Data availability by ECHIM Survey: 69% of ES indicators are available at the
national level. Data availability is significantly low regarding Health Status and Health
Determinants indicators. The main reason for this is that there has not been nationally
representative HES after 1991, and many diseases and functional disorders have not
been included in HIS conducted in Latvia. Health Care data are much better available,
because those data come mainly from advanced registers.
Data availability in European context: Data availability in Latvia is slightly lower
than European average, especially regarding the sections Health Status and Health
Determinants. The obvious reason is that no national level HES has been conducted
in Latvia in almost two decades, and HIS’s have been slightly narrow. Moreover, the
ES availability information follows the ECHI indicator definitions very strictly, which
naturally has a negative impact on the overall availability number, since some lowquality
and outdated data have been left off.
Overall situation of data sources: Health Statistics and Medical Technologies State
Agency (www.vsmtva.gov.lv) and Health Compulsory Insurance State Agency (VOAVA,
www.voava.gov.lv) are the most important organisations gathering health data and
hosting most registers. Others include the Riga Centre of Psychiatry and Narcology,
the Central Statistical Bureau (www.csb.gov.lv) and the Public Health Agency, which
performs the Finbalt survey every second year. At the moment record linkage is not
possible, but the legal basis for Register of Patients Diseases is in preparation, and the
permission to use it from Data State Inspection is expected. EHIS is in preparation, and
it will be carried out most likely in 2009 as a part of a national survey.
Health reporting: Health Statistics and Medical Technologies State Agency publishes
annually the extensive report Public Health Analysis in Latvia online. Other annual
reports (in English but not online) include Medical Aspects of Death in Latvia, Maternal
and Infant Health Care, Statistical Overview on Health and Health Care, and Health in
the Baltic Countries as a Baltic joint issue with the Ministry of Social Affairs of Estonia
and the Lithuanian Health Information Centre. The Mental Health Agency and the
Narcology State Agency also publish annual reports, and there is a section on health
statistics and survey data in the annual report of the Central Statistical Bureau.
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