Health in Latvia

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A new measure of expected human capital calculated for 195 countries from 1990 to 2016 and defined for each birth cohort as the expected years lived from age 20 to 64 years and adjusted for educational attainment, learning or education quality, and functional health status was published by The Lancet in September 2018. Latvia had the twenty-first highest level of expected human capital with 23 health, education, and learning-adjusted expected years lived between age 20 and 64 years.^[1]

As of 2009, there were approximately 8,600 inhabitants of Latvia living with HIV/AIDS, accounting for a 0.7% adult HIV prevalence rate. There were 32,376 (1.44%) individual instances of clinically reported alcoholism in Latvia in 2008, as well as cases of addictions to other substances.^[2] The annual number of births per 1,000 adolescent women aged 15 to 19 has declined from 49.9 in 1990 to 17.9 in 2007.^[3] In 2005, Latvia had a suicide rate of 24.5 per 100,000 inhabitants (down from 40.7 in 1995), the 7th highest in the world.^[4] Latvia achieved a remarkable improvement in infant mortality from 6.2/1000 births in 2012 to 3.9/1000 in 2014.^[5][6]

In 2018, the health among Latvian and international medical students studying in Riga was assessed. Latvian students displayed a higher prevalence of anxiety, depressive symptoms and physical symptoms. Latvian students displayed troubles adjusting to stressful life events. Further research to identify whether Latvians have a lower threshold for stressors or whether they are exposed to more stressors than international students should be performed.^[7] These stressors could be influenced by the growing social inequality within Latvia.^[8]