Latvia's "Day Without a Doctor" Pressures Government to Increase Wages

Doctors marched in Riga to protest stagnating wages in the “Day Without a Doctor.” (BNN News)

Thousands of medical professionals left their workplaces for the day to assemble outside Riga’s parliament building on November 7. Doctors and nurses, along with their supporters, gathered to demand that the government increase salaries in accordance with previous legislation. 

Healthcare professionals in Latvia have long reproached their field’s low wages; many are forced to take on multiple jobs to compensate. One protester complained, "I work my daily shift at one hospital, at night I also work overtime driving around in an ambulance, plus sometimes I lecture at medical schools on my rare days off. I get less than 3,000 euros a month for those jobs combined. How am I supposed to support my family?"

Parliament responded to workers’ desires last year when they voted to spend 120 million euros on increasing healthcare professionals’ salaries by 20 percent. However, the proposed budget for 2020 proves that the parliamentarians were overly optimistic: it only allows for a 42 million euro increase, a little over a third of what was originally offered. 

Latvia’s speaker of parliament stated, "I express deep regret for last year's promise, which we cannot carry out." She went on to stress that healthcare will remain a priority for the government in the coming years. 

In response to the planned protest, the nation’s minister of healthcare announced a new plan that could add 12 million more euros to the proposed funding by drawing from other sources, including the budget for constructing a Latvian embassy in Australia. The help of the extra allotment would allow for a 10 percent total increase in healthcare workers’ salaries. However, doctors were unwilling to compromise, and the protest went on as planned.

The so-called Day Without a Doctor intended to demonstrate the potentially dire future consequences of stagnating wages in the medical field. Organizers encouraged doctors to take an unpaid day off and cancel all scheduled appointments, though emergency services remained available.

Protesters chanted “Health for Latvia!” and held signs reading “United for Health,” and “I only want to work one job.” The rally was the largest in recent history for the Baltic state.

Latvia’s primarily publicly-funded healthcare system is regularly counted among the worst in Europe, due in part to a shortage of medical staff. The number of hospitals in the nation has steeply declined in recent years, and top medical professionals often seek out jobs in other countries. The 120 million euros originally proposed would have only been sufficient to bring healthcare expenditure up to four percent of Latvia’s GDP, significantly below the European Union average of seven percent. 

The prime minister of Latvia argued that the nation’s healthcare problems had been compounding for twenty years, and thus could not be solved as quickly as the demonstrators desired.

With their demands not met, the movement will proceed into its next phase, encouraging doctors and citizens alike to light candles and fly the nation’s flag half-mast until November 13.