Hard Times for Latvian Doctors

In 2009 Latvia lost 234 doctors, who decided to leave the country in order to get higher wages or to find a new job, after losing their one.

The situation is becoming worse, if compared to the past year, when only  88 doctors had decided to move to another country.

The preferred destination is England, but also Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Finland and Denmark have become popular among them.

The one that decide to escape are not only new one or less-experienced but also medical specialist and doctors with a lot of experience and, if the Latvian situation is already getting quite bad in this sense, it seems that it could go worse as there are not funds available to “motivate” doctors to stay since the government does not consider healthcare to be a priority as Maija Radzin, head of the Latvian Junior Doctors Association, said.

The expectations for Estonia unfortunately do not seem different: since the country has to reduce Health-care expenses in order to keep the GDP below 3% as required by European Union to join the Euro zone, the Estonian Health Insurance Fund took the decision of lower prices of medical services by 6% and this will result in cutting the wages of the hospital’s personal.

Fears were been expressed also by nurses because the cut of wage funds could results in many workers to be laid off.