There are no shortages of dentists in Cyprus, but Cypriots are the least likely in Europe to visit one for a check-up.
Cyprus is bottom of the EU list with only 0.12 consultations with a dentist per inhabitant in 2017 (down from 0.13 in 2016) followed by Romania with 0.4.
In Romania, Cyprus and Portugal (2012 data) each person consulted a dentist, on average, less than 0.5 times.
Six EU Member States reported averages between 0.5 and 1.0 consultation in 2017 — Italy (2013 data), Denmark, Hungary, the UK, Poland and Bulgaria.
Most of the remaining Member States reported averages between 1.0 and 1.6 consultations per year, with the Netherlands recording a significantly higher average (2.8 consultations).
According to data, the average number of consultations of dentists was, unsurprisingly, far lower than the average number of consultations of medical doctors.
Between 2012 and 2017, the average number of dental consultations decreased in 6 of the 19 EU states for which data are available, most notably in Denmark (down 0.4 consultations per year), while it was unchanged in seven Member States.
The largest increases were recorded for the Netherlands and Lithuania, where the average rose by 0.7 and 0.4 consultations per year respectively.
Women more likely than men to consult a dentist
In 2014, almost 4 out of every 10 Europeans reported that they had visited a dentist or orthodontist less than six months prior to the survey. The range in this share was from 22 % in Bulgaria to 58 % in Denmark, with Romania (9 %) below and Germany (61 %) above.
In a majority of countries, the largest share of the adult population declared that they had not consulted a dentist or an orthodontist within the last year.
In Romania, more than three quarters (76%) of the adult population declared that the last time they had visited a dentist or orthodontist was one year ago or more, while shares of more than 50% were also recorded in Hungary, Lithuania, Cyprus, Spain, Latvia and Bulgaria.
There were two Member States where more than 6 % of the adult population had never visited a dentist or orthodontist — Italy and Romania.
On average, the proportion of persons having visited a dentist or orthodontist within the last year was 62.8% for women and 57.2 % for men (a difference of 5.6 percentage points between the two sexes).
This gender gap in 2014 was consistently in favour of women across the EU, with the biggest gaps (upwards of 8.0 percentage points difference) recorded in Malta, Latvia, the United Kingdom, Estonia and Poland, peaking at 12.4 percentage points in Lithuania.
