About 900% more babies were born with congenital syphilis in Mississippi in 2021 than just four years earlier in 2017, Centers for Disease Control data shows. The sexually transmitted infection, which syphilis-positive pregnant people can pass onto a fetus, often results in tragic outcomes.
“Syphilis is bad and there’s no doubt about it, but for babies, it’s devastating,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs, who served as Mississippi’s state health officer from 2018 to 2022, told the Mississippi Free Press. “If a baby contracts syphilis in the womb, it’s a 40% chance that baby is going to die, either through miscarriage or stillbirth or death after birth.”
The CDC reported that there were 64 congenital syphilis cases in Mississippi in 2021, up from 37 in 2020 and just two in 2017. Mississippi ranked fourth in the nation for congenital syphilis in 2021, at a rate of 182 per 100,000 live births.
Mississippi had 520 regular non-congenital syphilis cases in 2006, and numbers fluctuated through 2013 when there were 293 cases. But by 2017, there were 937 cases. 2021 data showed 2,605 syphilis cases.
“The problem that we see with syphilis and many STDs (sexually-transmitted diseases) is that we often will see fluctuations and increases and decreases that require us to continue to be vigilant, to identify new ways to increase awareness, new ways to do investigations,” Mississippi State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers told the Mississippi Free Press.
The Centers for Disease Control has not released its 2022 sexually-transmitted infection reports, so the most updated information regarding STIs is from 2021.
Dobbs, who is now the dean of the John D. Bower School of Population Health at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, explained that the dangers of congenital syphilis include babies developing neurological challenges from the disease or being born prematurely. He mentioned how the STI can go undetected in early pregnancy.
“About a third of women who have syphilis in pregnancy don’t have any prenatal care in the first trimester, so that’s a whole other challenge,” he said.
Mississippi had the fourth-highest rate of congenital syphilis in the nation in 2021. Graphic
