His weekend warning came after more than 100,000 local residents were found to have contracted STDs in 2004, an increase of 24.16 percent on 2003.

Of the STD patients detected last year, 67.17 percent contracted a disease through non-marital sex.

So said Chen Yongfeng, a senior doctor from the Guangdong Provincial Prevention and Control Centre for Dermatosis (a disease of the skin) and STDs such as syphilis, genital herpes and gonorrhea.

Chen told a seminar on preventing STDs and skin diseases on Saturday that almost 70 percent of the STD patients are married.

Young people aged between 20 and 29 years old were 45.32 percent of the total with a disease, Chen said. And male STD patients accounted for 52.58 percent of the total patients.

A recent survey in the province indicated that almost 20 percent of personnel employed in local entertainment venues and frequent visitors of those venues were found to have an STD. The entertainment venues include karaoke parlors, nightclubs and bars.

Almost 8 percent of Guangdong's drug addicts were found to have a sexually transmitted disease.

To help fight the growing STD threat, Chen urged the use of condoms. Guangdong health departments plan to give out more than 500,000 free condoms at the province's entertainment venues this year, Chen said.

In addition to the government's efforts to increase examinations, local residents must also be educated better to further raise their awareness of how to prevent STDs and related skin diseases, Chen said.

By the end of 2004, Guangdong, with a population of about 110 million, had seen more than 1.26 million STD patients in recent years, one of the highest such figures on the Chinese mainland.

Most STD patients were found in the prosperous city of Dongguan, Zhuhai and Shenzhen special economic zones in the Pearl River Delta.

Meanwhile, the number of cases involving mothers giving syphilis to their unborn babies also rose in Guangdong in 2004.

"That relates to the abolishment of premarital check-ups," Chen said.

Guangdong gave health examinations to 5,585 pregnant women between November 2004 and February 2005. It found 30, or 0.54 percent, had syphilis.

(China Daily April 4, 2005)