Women and girls with endometriosis will be able to get a diagnosis from their family doctor based on their symptoms, rather than waiting years for surgery to confirm it, under a clinical guideline the Government has confirmed New Zealand will adopt.
Health Minister Simeon Brown and Minister for Women Nicola Grigg announced the change on Tuesday afternoon. Health New Zealand will adapt the Australian Living Evidence Guideline on Endometriosis for use here, working with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, other medical colleges and Endometriosis New Zealand. The adapted guideline is expected to launch in the middle of 2027.
Endometriosis is an inflammatory disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside it. Symptoms include period pain, pelvic pain, and subfertility or infertility. It affects roughly one in 10 women and girls in New Zealand, and Endometriosis New Zealand puts the number of people living with the condition at a minimum of 120,000.
In the announcement, Brown said the condition could have a significant impact on quality of life, education, employment and wellbeing. “Yet research shows it can take eight to 12 years to receive a diagnosis in New Zealand. That is far too long to wait for answers,” he said.
The bottleneck is the operation used to confirm the disease. “Part of the problem is that laparoscopic surgery is usually used to confirm endometriosis, meaning women can spend years waiting for both diagnosis and treatment,” Brown said.
“The new guidelines will change that by supporting GPs to make a clinical diagnosis based on a woman’s symptoms, family history, and examination, rather than requiring surgery to confirm it. Once a clinical diagnosis is made, GPs will then be able to prescribe treatment immediately.”
For up to 60 per cent of women, low impact hormonal medication is an effective option, and under the new approach it can be prescribed without waiting for an operating theatre. Surgery does not disappear. “Surgery will remain available for those who need it, but it will no longer be the only route to a diagnosis,” Brown said.
Grigg said earlier diagnosis depends on symptoms being recognised in the first place, and that too often they have not been. “Too many women have spent years saying something is wrong, only to be told their pain is normal and something they simply have to put up with. It is not,” she said.
Health New Zealand will build online training, a webinar and an education resource for GPs alongside the guideline, and is looking at extra pain management support including pain education and allied health services. Brown said the change should also take pressure off hospitals, because fewer patients would be referred to a specialist simply to confirm what their symptoms already indicated.
Endometriosis New Zealand chief executive Tanya Cooke welcomed the decision on RNZ’s Morning Report on Wednesday, calling it a big win. “So people who are suffering from the condition will receive a diagnosis much earlier and can commence treatment and this should make a big difference,” she said. The average wait for a diagnosis is currently close to 10 years.
Cooke said the shift puts more weight on imaging, including transvaginal ultrasound and potentially MRI, and less on the operating theatre. “You cannot underestimate what people go through when they’re experiencing these debilitating symptoms. Young girls have to take time off school, maybe can’t take on the careers that they wanted to,” she said. She described the announcement as the result of sustained advocacy by the organisation, and said she was excited to see international clinical best practice implemented here.
That advocacy has a paper trail. In a media statement on 7 August 2025, Endometriosis New Zealand publicly urged the Ministry of Health and Te Whatu Ora to replace the country’s 2020 recommendations with the Australian guideline. The chair of its clinical advisory committee, Dr Michael Wynn-Williams, said at the time that the older document was no longer fit for purpose. “Our current guideline is now outdated and out of step with modern diagnostic and treatment practices,” he said. Tuesday’s announcement is the answer to that letter, a little over a year later.
The obvious question is whether a new document on its own changes anything in a waiting room. The 2020 guidance was itself written to encourage doctors to make a suspected diagnosis and start treatment without waiting for surgery, and it did not close the gap. A survey of 185 New Zealand GPs published in the journal Health Expectations in 2024 found 65 per cent knew the 2020 document existed but only 35 per cent had read it, and just over half felt they knew enough about endometriosis for routine practice. Most referred patients to a specialist only after other treatments had failed.
The same survey pointed to problems a guideline cannot fix by itself. GPs reported very limited access to public gynaecology services, difficulty getting ultrasounds, and recommended treatments that are not funded. That is why the training package sitting alongside the new guideline matters more than the guideline’s wording, and why the timeline matters too. Nothing changes for a patient sitting in front of a doctor this week. The launch is still roughly 10 months away, which is another year added to waits already measured in years.
The scale of the problem was set out earlier this month in research from Endometriosis New Zealand and the University of Canterbury, which found a third of patients surveyed had been told by a medical practitioner that getting pregnant would ease their symptoms, advice the existing guidance does not support. The 2024 GP survey found a small share of doctors still offering that suggestion, and a similar share recommending long term opioids.
For now the practical change is a promise about how a diagnosis will be reached in 2027. Whether the eight to 12 year wait falls will depend on how many GPs read the new guideline, how quickly they can get a scan for a patient, and whether the medicines they are told to prescribe first are ones their patients can afford.
Have you waited years for an endometriosis diagnosis, or been told your pain was normal? Tell us what happened in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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