Diabetes Management in Tenerife

Healthcare in Tenerife: what visitors and residents should know

How local care works in Tenerife and across Canary Islands, Spain — and where an online doctor fits alongside it.

Tenerife's public healthcare is delivered by the Servicio Canario de la Salud (SCS), the Canary Islands' regional health service. Spanish is the only official language — the Canaries have no co-official regional language, unlike Catalonia, Valencia or the Basque Country. State healthcare is run at regional level, so the rules you meet depend on where you are rather than on Spain as a whole. EU, EEA and Swiss visitors holding an EHIC (or a UK GHIC) can use public primary care and emergency departments on the same terms as residents, though you will normally be asked for the card plus photo ID at reception. Outside surgery hours, pharmacies operate a rota — the farmacia de guardia — and the duty pharmacy is posted in the window of every closed chemist. Tenerife's defining feature for healthcare is that it is an Atlantic island roughly 1,300 km from mainland Spain and closer to Africa than to Europe: repatriation and onward transfer are flights, not drives, and are slower and costlier to arrange than from the mainland. The island's tourism is genuinely year-round rather than summer-concentrated, which means a steady twelve-month load and a large population of long-staying winter visitors, many of them older and managing ongoing conditions. Tenerife also spans an unusual altitude range up to Teide at 3,715 m, and visitors ascending from sea level in a single morning occasionally meet altitude effects they had not anticipated.

• Year-round warm climate
• Large British and German expat community
• Popular winter sun destination

Areas we cover around Tenerife and Canary Islands

An online consultation is not a substitute for emergency care. If you are in Tenerife and your symptoms are severe or life-threatening, call 112 or go to the nearest emergency department.