From at least 1995 there was evidence of some external interest in the development of palliative care in Latvia. An article published in the EAPC newsletter in that year reported on a visit made by Christel Pakarinen, of Karuna, Finland, who had met with the Latvian Minister of Health and some local doctors interested in starting palliative care; ideas for links had the support of the Latvian ambassador to Finland at that time.8 Beyond this article there appears to be no published material, even in the ‘grey’ literature relating to palliative care developments in Latvia.
In Riga, Dr Vilnis Sosars has adopted a major leadership role from his base in the Latvian Oncological Centre, where he heads the country’s only adult palliative care inpatient unit. He is the Latvian representative within ECEPT and has established good educational links with the palliative medicine department in Poznan and some doctors from Latvia have attended postgraduate courses in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Elsewhere there is no other evidence however of twinning or partnership arrangements with palliative care services in other countries.
In 1998 palliative care was included as a topic in the 2nd Baltic Congress of Oncology and Radiology and in the same year, an Albert Schweitzer Foundation seminar on palliative care and pain control was held in Latvia. These together with sickness fund recognition and the widening of educational opportunities in palliative care have been attributed to the direct influence of the Poznan Declaration, which has provided leverage for palliative care innovation in Latvia. In 2002 palliative care sessions were included in the 3rd Baltic Congress on Oncology and in the same year, in response to growing public debates about euthanasia, Vilnis Sosars and colleagues published a short pamphlet on the history of palliative care.
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