EDMONTON — Alberta’s health minister admits the province is losing its war against the highest rate of sexually transmitted infections in Canada, so will spend $14 million to try to turn things around.
“We’re not achieving the results we had hoped to achieve, so we have to try a different approach,” Gene Zwozdesky told a news conference Tuesday.
“(We’re) hiring more counsellors, hiring more prevention co-ordinators, hiring more nurses and getting the message out.”
Zwozdesky said his department will spend $4 million a year in each of the next three years to hire more staff and increase testing.
Another $2 million will go toward an advertising campaign that includes monochrome warning posters featuring 20-something bar patrons with long legs, open-neck shirts,and come-hither looks.
There are also video ads of young people getting ready to go out on dates when open sores suddenly appear on their faces.
The title of the campaign is Don’t You Get It.
Zwozdesky said the next round of advertising, to come in a month, will be even “edgier” to reach those in the most at-risk group — 15- to 24-year-olds.
He wouldn’t give details, but said it’s “a very, very difficult area to try and get across a message without getting a lot more dramatic.”
“We have to communicate in a way that connects with that particular age group, using their particular lingo, using their particular images, and so on.”
Andre Corriveau, Alberta’s chief health officer, said the spike is due in part to the influx of young people in the province’s recent population boom, along with high numbers of itinerant workers in isolated areas, such as the oilsands operations near Fort McMurray.
“We do have a younger population than they have in eastern Canada at this point in time. That will drive it by itself,” said Corriveau.
“And because of the economic activity, we’ve brought in a lot of people from outside who are living here by themselves. They are away from their wives or girlfriends, and they go to bars in the evenings and they make stupid decisions.”
Government statistics presented Tuesday indicate there were 13,000 chlamydia cases reported in 2009 — a 207 per cent jump from 10 years earlier. Many of those cases were in women younger than 25.
Infectious syphilis cases increased to 279 in 2009. About two-thirds of those cases occurred in men. In the last five years, 25 infants have been confirmed with congenital syphilis, with nine of them dying.
Dr. Gerry Predy of Alberta Health Services said the immediate goal is to corral the outbreak.
“We’ll be putting 10 more partner-notification nurses on the ground. This will allow us to ensure all positive lab reports of STIs are followed up,” he said.
“(And) this will reach the contact (patients) for testing, diagnosis and treatment in a more timely manner.”
Predy said there is more money for physicians in sexually transmitted infection clinics in Edmonton, Calgary and Fort McMurray, and there will be improved testing for pregnant women at risk in marginalized areas.
The government’s goal is to reduce rates to below the Canadian average by 2016. That equates to cutting syphilis cases from 7.7 per 100,000 people to 5.8. For gonorrhea, that means a reduction of cases from 43.8 per 100,000 to an even 40.
It’s a five-year plan, but the funding is only confirmed for the first three years. Zwozdesky said there’ll be a re-evaluation after the third year.
David Swann, leader of the Opposition Alberta Liberals, said the announcement is long overdue.
Swann said the government has had a plan ready to go for over five years but was set back when it dismissed four key doctors with expertise in infectious disease.
The problem was compounded in 2008, Swann said, when Dr. Sam Houston, an infectious disease expert, was censured by a provincial health official after he spoke out about the government’s dismissal of the doctors.
“Once again, government mismanagement has had a tremendous impact on the health of Albertans,” said Swann in a news release.
“Had the government not dismissed those four key doctors, had they actually implemented their original plan, perhaps those babies wouldn’t have died, and perhaps the others would have been born healthy instead of with crippling birth defects.”
Brian Mason, leader of the NDP, echoed those concerns.
The plan “may prove effective,” Mason said.
“It’s just simply the fact they’ve ignored the problem for five long years. I’m not sure that this is necessarily going to be as effective as the plan that was originally rolled out.
“We’ve lost some of the best people in our health-care system.”