Opinion: As syphilis comes roaring back, newborn babies are tragic victims
Some diseases fade away. Others seem to do that, but then come roaring back. That’s what has happened with syphilis, especially congenital syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection passed from mother to child.
When I became a public health physician in 2007, congenital syphilis was something I had read about but never seen. Today, consulting on cases of it has become routine; my colleagues and I at the California Prevention Training Center received more than 100 requests for consultations about congenital syphilis in 2019 and 2020. An April 2021 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms this disturbing trend nationwide. In 2019, the last year with complete data, there were 1,870 cases of congenital syphilis in the U.S., a 300% increase over the past five years.
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