WILLEMSTAD – Women and older residents are generally more frequent users of healthcare services in Curaçao, while education and household income are also associated with differences in how recently residents seek medical care, according to the Enkuesta Sosial 2025.
The Central Bureau of Statistics found a clear difference between men and women in visits to general practitioners.
Among women, 70.7 percent reported visiting a general practitioner during the 12 months preceding the survey, compared with 60.6 percent of men — a difference of 10.1 percentage points.
Men were also considerably more likely to report that their last visit to a general practitioner had been more than a year earlier. This applied to 31.9 percent of men compared with 22.7 percent of women.
Age produced another clear difference.
Among residents aged 65 and older, 65.1 percent had visited their general practitioner during the previous six months, the highest percentage of any age group. By comparison, the figure was 55.1 percent among those aged 45 to 64, 45.1 percent among people aged 25 to 44 and 37.3 percent among those aged 18 to 24.
CBS also identified differences according to education.
Among respondents with a lower level of education, 61.4 percent had visited a general practitioner within the previous six months. Among highly educated respondents, the figure was 54.1 percent.
Conversely, 24.6 percent of highly educated respondents said their last general practitioner visit was more than 12 months earlier, compared with 20.5 percent among respondents with lower educational attainment.
Household finances showed another interesting pattern. Residents who considered their household income “more than sufficient” were less likely to have recently visited a general practitioner.
Only 40.6 percent of this group had visited a GP during the previous six months, while 36.5 percent said their last visit had been more than a year earlier. Among the other income categories, approximately 49 to 55 percent reported a GP visit during the preceding six months.
The overall findings show that healthcare use in Curaçao is not uniform across the population. CBS found differences according to gender, age, education and perceived household income, providing policymakers with a more detailed picture of which groups use particular parts of the healthcare system most frequently.
The report notes that women generally used healthcare more recently than men, while general-practitioner use increased with age and was higher among people with lower educational attainment. Dental care showed the opposite educational pattern, with highly educated residents visiting dentists more recently.
There are several additional strong stories still inside the 58-page report for Monday, including the Curaçao-versus-Netherlands/OECD comparisons, the sharp change in informal caregiving, detailed dental-care inequalities, healthcare dissatisfaction by provider, and the report's findings on Curaçao's aging population.