Valdis Zatlers |
Wiki |
Valdis Zatlers (born March 22, 1955) is the 7th and current president of Latvia. He won the Latvian presidential election of May 31, 2007. He became President of Latvia on 8 July 2007.
Valdis Zatlers is an orthopedic surgeon, who graduated from the Institute of Medicine in Riga in 1979. After studies he worked at Riga Hospital No. 2 and became chief of its traumatology unit in 1985. He was the director of the Latvian Traumatology and Orthopaedics Hospital since 1994 and chief of its board since 1998, he left these offices on 5 July 2007.
Zatlers participated in the cleanup operations after the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. On 27 April 2007, he received the Order of the Three Stars (Trīs Zvaigžņu Ordenis) of the 4th rank for his contributions in care for health of the patients and promotion of orthopedics in Latvia.