This is the English version of Inga Spriņģe’s opinion piece for Norway’s newspaper Dagbladet on why should they care about being called paedophiles.

A couple of years ago an article on Facebook, shared widely by several of my educated, urbanite, latte-drinking friends, captured my attention. Under the headline “Democracy with the flavour of paedophilia”, a famous Latvian children doctor-anesthetist who on a daily basis faces grossly injured children whose parents has been negligent, was ranting about the rotten, decadent Western Europe ruining family values. He singled out Norway as the worst example of that – stating that the Norwegian education minister promotes introductory lessons about incest in the primary schools “because incest is a social norm in Norway”.

Who is polluting the Baltic internet in Russian?

Andrejs Ērglis, one of Latvia’s most famous doctors, is from a well known medical family and combines professional talent with personal charm. In his own words, he has raised Latvian interventional heart surgery to a world level. But how can a poor country with one of Europe’s lowest healthcare budgets also be among the world leaders in expensive heart operations using stents, the microscopic structures used to repair damaged arteries? And why, even though it spends so much on such procedures, does Latvia not also lead in reducing the number of premature deaths, with heart disease still the country’s main killer?

Latvia is a land of extremes. In a country where 42% of children live at risk of poverty and social exclusion, the state can afford to pay 142,000 euros in paternity benefits for one child, and 200,000 euros in unemployment benefits. The Latvian system of taxes and benefits supports its rich more than the poor, leading to the highest income inequality in the EU. Re:Baltica investigates – how did Latvia get there?