Much like it is across the country, syphilis is spiking in the Sudbury district. Sudbury's Board of Health was told Sept. 19 that the number of syphilis cases in the local jurisdiction is surging significantly.
Health Canada describes syphilis as a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum. If left untreated syphilis can cause serious health problems.
The board members at Public Health Sudbury & Districts (PHSD) were given an update on the changing patterns of infectious disease by Stacey Laforest, director of health protection at PHSD.
She told the board that syphilis cases in the local area "have increased dramatically."
Making reference to a slide presentation, Laforest presented a graph showing that the number of cases presented over the past 10 years have spiked from five cases in 2015 to 113 cases in 2024.
“In the last 10 years, the distribution of cases and associated workload is significant," Laforest told the board.
"While cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea have decreased, the workload associated with the increase in number and complexity of syphilis cases has created an overall increase in workload for PHSD sexual health."
The graph chart she presented showed a steady growth from 2015 with a spike in 2019, where the number of cases more than doubled from the previous year to 39.
It was also that year that PHSD put out a news alert advising the health care community that the numbers were on the rise.
At that time, the health unit advisory statement commented on the increase:
"The number of cases of infectious syphilis has been increasing locally over the last several years. Since 2014, a total of 40 cases have been confirmed with 13 having been reported since the beginning 2019. Most cases reported this year involve men who have sex with men."
Since that time, the numbers dropped off slightly during the COVID-19 years. There were 100 cases in 2022, 2021 and 2022.
But then the number of cases spiked again in 2023 and 2024, with 105 cases and a projected number of 113 cases, respectively.
This means that the jurisdiction of the Sudbury health unit has the sixth highest year-to-date rate among all health regions in Ontario at 52.22 cases per 100,000 population, said the presentation..
In the brief discussion that followed, board member Natalie Tessier asked about what age groups were in the syphilis statistics and whether this might mean introducing a safe sex program in secondary schools.
"I'm wondering, for example, if it's time to maybe bring back safe sex and information to high school students about the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. I remember sitting through those presentations when I was in high school," said Tessier.
Laforest said while it was a good question, she did not have a numbers breakdown on the actual cases at hand at the moment. She said she believed the majority of cases involved men.
Dr. Mustafa Hirji, the acting medical officer of health, said his memory indicated that most of the cases were people in their twenties and thirties, not school-aged people.
Hirji added that education about sexually transmitted infections in the schools is still part of the learning process.
Hirji said that is not the only answer.
"One thing to remember is that there are limits to how much people are going to respond to a message about what they should do. We all know, you know, smoking is bad for you, but lots of people still smoke," Hirji told the meeting.
"Lots of the way we can actually have a better impact on changing health behaviors is less about educating people on the behavior that they should do, but creating environments where the natural choice people are going to make is going to mean the healthy choice, right? You know, changing social norms. You know, creating incentives for certain types of behavior," said Hirji.
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.
