Ladies and gentlemen,
Health is the greatest value anyone in the world has. Health of every next generation is determined by their parents and grandparents, the lifestyle and health awareness and level of medical progress at the time.
Humanity has created technologies and significantly deepened its general understanding of human health, making knowledge accessible to almost anyone. This is definitely one of the upsides of rather controversial digital age. There are data sets that have been making everyday life of medics and healthcare providers a lot easier for some time now.
At the same time, customised information in a simple language has been missing from our local digital platforms. It is either fragmented or not reliable enough. People often have to resort to informal online forums to find best advice from people who have already had experience with certain aspects of healthcare or diagnose others. Sometimes such advice or self-healing can cause enormous harm.
Portal of Children’s University Hospital is on the opposite end of this spectrum. Content is created by doctors, experts, and that means it is based on scientific facts and medical practices that have been tested by time. And it is the source for all answers.
Today’s children and youth are the future of Latvia. Healthy lifestyle and understanding of how healthcare works needs to be promoted both at the family and national level. We should encourage and support that.
I hope portal veselapasaule.lv will become a wise and useful advisor to every mom and dad, teen and youngster.
Healthier people make Latvia stronger, smarter and more energetic. The country that we all want to see. The country we all want to live in. The country we want to leave to our children. And that is the goal we should all aspire to.
Let me share some of my experience attending the World Economic Forum in Davos. Along with discussions on economic matters, there were also panels that looked into mental health and various its dimensions, for example, mental health in minors and youth, stigmatisation of mental problems, mental health at work from employers and employee perspective. What surprised me was that many speakers said they should ‘thank’ Covid-19 because it highlighted problems that have been embedded deeper and have ‘surfaced’ only during the pandemic. Almost all discussions came to a unanimous conclusion that we need to talk about these problems as silence will not solve anything.
One of participants who works with mental health of LGBT youth shared a very interesting story. Mental health is even a bigger challenge for LGBT youth because on top of growing into the world, with hormonal and mental changes, physical changes, evolution of relationship with family and friends, they are also having questions about their sexual identity. These young people are much more prone to suicide but it can easily be reduced by some 40% if we would talk to them and ask them about suicidal thoughts. We need to start talking. Let us try to solve problems. Let us not forget about our young ones. All of them are important. We need to keep fighting for each one.
