Patients in Cyprus needing endocrinology care face waits of three to five months for a GHS appointment — and up to March 2027 at some private GHS doctors — as a chronic shortage of specialists shows no sign of easing, the Cyprus Federation of Patient Associations (OSAK) warned.
Public sector endocrinology appointments are currently booked out to December 2026, while some private doctors registered with the GHS are scheduling as far ahead as March 2027, according to the federation’s secretary, Miltos Miltiadous. In some cases, he said, doctors are telling patients they are not accepting new patients at all.
There are 30 endocrinologists within the GHS and around 15 outside the system, Miltiadous said, serving a beneficiary population of roughly one million — approximately equal to the entire population of Cyprus. He noted that more than 10% of the population has diabetes, with thyroid conditions also rising year on year.
“This problem — the shortage of endocrinologists in Cyprus — has been identified for years and has been acknowledged by the Ministry of Health, the Health Insurance Organisation and the Cyprus Medical Association,” Miltiadous said. “Unfortunately, it has not been resolved, and patients continue to suffer.”
He said HIO restrictions were compounding the problem. Under current rules, GPs cannot prescribe certain injectable diabetes medications or order routine vitamin D tests for eligible patients without a referral to an endocrinologist or another specialist.
He added that GPs who hold a specialisation or special interest in diabetology are also barred from prescribing for their diabetic patients and must refer them on regardless.
“All these patients, where there is no question of safety and no clinical reason requiring a specialist referral, could be served by their own GP — and the endocrinologist waiting lists would not be so burdened,” Miltiadous said.
OSAK is calling on the Ministry of Health and the Cyprus Medical Association to introduce incentives to encourage newly qualified doctors to specialise in endocrinology, Miltiadous said. He also called on the HIO to review the blanket restrictions introduced at the GHS’s launch to curb abuse, arguing they were no longer appropriate nearly seven years on.
“We may have seen abuse of vitamin D testing in the GHS’s first year,” he said, “but we cannot continue almost seven years later with the same system and go on making thousands of chronic patients suffer without revising these restrictions.”