TRNC Medical Association: Emergency department queues caused by lack of healthcare planning

Professor Ceyhun Dalkan, chairman of the Cyprus Turkish Medical Association (KTTB), said that overcrowded emergency departments, long waits and disruptions in service in Northern Cyprus were linked not to the work of medical professionals, but to the lack of planning in the healthcare system.

In a written statement, Dalkan noted that attempts were being made to shift responsibility for the system’s problems onto healthcare workers. According to him, the problem lay not with the staff, but with the Ministry of Health, which, as he put it, “has failed to plan the healthcare system and is unable to manage it effectively”.

Dalkan described the current period as one of the most difficult in the history of healthcare in the TRNC: the planning of medical services has failed to keep pace with population growth. Primary care has not been strengthened, while a tiered healthcare system — in which a patient first sees a general practitioner and only then a specialist — has still not been established.

Emergency departments cannot replace primary care, the head of the association stressed. “New hospitals and departments are certainly needed. But constructing a hospital building does not mean establishing an effective healthcare service,” he said, pointing to the need to plan staffing, equipment and specialist training.

Dalkan called for the hospitals in Kyrenia and Güzelyurt, whose completion has been awaited for years, to open as soon as possible, but said that staffing needs must first be calculated and training begun. Otherwise, he said, the new buildings would merely transfer the existing problems to different walls.

The association’s proposals include creating a tiered healthcare system, placing primary and preventive medicine at the centre of healthcare policy, realistically planning staffing and infrastructure with population growth in mind, and introducing universal health insurance. Dalkan urged the Ministry of Health to stop blaming healthcare workers: in his view, this worsens working conditions and threatens people’s right to medical care.