Dzintars Mozgis elected president of Latvia’s doctors’ association

Dzintars Mozgis has been elected president of the Latvian Medical Association with 105 of 198 votes, LSM reported. He is a health-care management physician, paediatric surgeon, lecturer at Rīga Stradiņš University and deputy director of the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, responsible for public health and prevention.

Mozgis said the association should be guided by unity, quality and competence. He wants it to become a more unified and influential professional organisation for doctors and dentists, able to agree on common positions and represent them in dialogue with the state.

“I see myself more in the background, encouraging doctors to reach consensus through discussion and debate on many complex and disputed issues, including the gap between patients’ expectations and the resources available, because resources are far too scarce,” Mozgis said. He added that he believed the association could work better.

Mozgis has previously served on the association’s board. He also stood in parliamentary elections and, in the previous year’s municipal elections, ran on the National Alliance list.

In 2009, while Mozgis was managing Children’s Clinical University Hospital, the Health Ministry began an internal investigation into whether he had exercised sufficient oversight after the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau identified violations in the hospital’s construction procurement. The investigation later concluded that he had not acted unlawfully, and he returned to his post.

Mozgis and psychiatrist Māris Taube had been nominated for the presidency. The newly elected vice-presidents are Anda Nulle, head of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Centre at Pauls Stradiņš Clinical University Hospital, and Angelika Krūmiņa, the outgoing vice-president, a professor in the Infectology Department at Rīga Stradiņš University and a leading researcher at the BIOR scientific institute.