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REGINA — Saskatchewan doctors have received an alert from the Ministry of Health about the high rate of sexually transmitted infections in the province.

The alert is in a news email sent out by the Saskatchewan Medical Association with information from Dr. Denise Werker, the province’s deputy chief medical health officer.

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Werker says there are several reasons for the alert.

“Certainly our rates for syphilis have increased, so they are 2.7 times higher in 2016 as compared to what they were in 2015 during the same time period. In addition, our gonorrhea rates have substantively increased in 2016, so they had increased 39 per cent as compared to the same time period in 2015,” Werker said Friday

The alert says there 60 syphilis cases as of the end of October, up from 22 in the same period in 2015.

There were 1,087 gonorrhea cases as of the end of October, up from 779 in the same period in 2015, it said.