Cases of syphilis continue to be on the rise in the North.
Medical Officer of Health for the NHR Dr. Michael Isaac says we undoubtedly have a syphilis outbreak:
"Last year we had approximately 6 cases in our region, and this year we’re up to about 15, so 21 cases in total over about the past year. These numbers definitely are higher than we’ve seen in the past, we usually would have between 0 and 4 to 5 cases per year".
Isaac says most of these cases are in Thompson. He says practicing safe sex is the best way residents can prevent the disease from spreading.
The NHR is also doing their part. Isaac says they have an outbreak response they're following:
"It involves communicating with our clinicians, providing some education for them because many clinicians haven’t seen syphilis in the past. It’s an old, very old disease, that we haven’t seen and is now back in our community, so we’re doing some clinician education, public education. We’re doing some enhanced surveillance, so we’re gathering more data and we’re analyzing it in different ways than we would have in the past."
