On Monday, Nov. 13, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) issued a public health alert following five stillbirths or neonatal deaths in babies with congenital syphilis born between January 1 and September 1, 2023.
This new alert comes on the heels of a memo that NCDHHS sent out to providers last week asking for providers’ help to prevent congenital syphilis in order to reverse an “alarming trend.”
From 2012 to 2022, according to state stats, there was a 55 percent increase in reported syphilis cases in North Carolina among women with an associated increase in congenital syphilis infections – from 1 case in 2012 to 57 cases in 2022.
According to NCDHHS, the increase isn’t only happening in North Carolina. Instead, this state trend is mirroring a national trend that was described this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Vital Signs” publication.
The good thing is that congenital syphilis is preventable. The bad thing is that, if left untreated, syphilis in pregnancy can result in “miscarriages, stillbirth and neonatal death, as well as adverse life-long health impacts for the baby such as bone damage, severe anemia, enlarged liver and spleen, jaundice, nerve problems causing blindness or deafness, meningitis, or skin rashes.”
As a rule, public health agencies review each case of congenital syphilis found in the state in order to understand why the infections weren’t prevented.
A review of North Carolina’s 2022 congenital syphilis cases found the following reasons:
- Little to no prenatal care
- Missed opportunities to test women during pregnancy, as required by North Carolina’s Public Health law
- Inadequate or delayed treatment of the maternal syphilis infection.
State health leaders say that all pregnant women should be screened at least three times during pregnancy. That’s because sexually transmitted infections can still be present even if the exposure happened in the past – and even if there are no symptoms.
In fact, in 2022, 86 percent of pregnant women diagnosed with syphilis in North Carolina had no symptoms at the time of diagnosis.
Symptom-based testing alone would have missed these infections.
In addition, because many mothers of infants with congenital syphilis get little or no prenatal care, it’s important for health care providers to screen pregnant women for syphilis in other settings, such as urgent care offices or emergency rooms.
This new effort is just one of many that NCDHHS is using to fight syphilis in the state. Other recent initiatives included calling a Southeast Congenital Syphilis Payers Summit to identify policy levers that payers can use to address this growing epidemic.
The state has also implemented a public education campaign to spread awareness of syphilis and the importance of testing, so that pregnant women and their partners have access to information and treatment, and increasing access to syphilis testing by distributing point-of-care tests.
There’s a lot more information on all this on the NCDHHS Public Health website.
I am alarmed. I might suggest that people who are intimate should use a mask instead of protection.
Pube-police!
Imagine the state actually cares about the unborn child, unlike yourself. The article talks about preventing miscarriages and or birth defects in unborn children and your mask comment implies that nothing should be done to help these mothers and unborn children.
You may be right. But you missed the point.
I wish the state was as concerned about the alarming number of children being raised and/or indoctrinated as liberals with little or no morals. If they (and by they, I mean everyone) did their part to correct that issue, a lot of the other things would fall into place.
Liberals = no morals? You mean the party that is perfectly ok with their leading candidate being the guy who tried to steal the election using known false claims of mass fraud. The party whose leader has been proven guilty of sexual assault in court? The party whose leader cheated on all of his wives? The party whose leader claims he can just grab women by the *****. The party whose leader openly cheated on his taxes and is now facing prosecution in court for those actions?
But the party who believe is diversity, equal rights for all people (including LGBTQ community members), etc… THAT is the part you claim has no morals?
Yes, all except the part about being associated with a party of fraud and some guy accused of sexual assaults etc. I’m not a Republican, and we could list the indiscretions of politicians from all sides until we ran out of ink. I would however gladly take Trump over any Democrat. He may not be my first choice, but he’ll do. Nothing he has done has been any worse than any other president in the last 200 years. You folks just want to give that one hell because he didn’t fit the mold of traditional doormats in the Oval Office. He’s despised because he refuses to be controlled by “the party” or by lobbyists. Sure he’s an a$$, but my 401-k, utilities, & grocery bill sure looked a lot better while he was raising hell in Washington.
Where, since the beginning of time has equality or equal rights ever existed? I say it has not existed since Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, and will never again. Democrats obviously do not believe in diversity or equal rights & the alphabet people don’t either. The good book even explains strife & turmoil will abound ’til the end of time. Socialist Utopia is a fictional place. So… I’m perfectly happy living out my days with as few socialists and libtards in it as possible.
So you are a republican. Got. The ignorance you spew sounds like every run of the mill MAGA hat type person. Bigoted and blaming it on the Bible. Riiiiight.