The rise in sexually transmitted infections in the United States has taken a particularly tragic turn: More than 3,700 cases of congenital syphilis were reported in 2022, roughly 11 times the number recorded a decade ago, according to data released on Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Syphilis during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage and stillbirth, and infants who survive may become blind or deaf, or have severe developmental delays. In 2022, the disease caused 231 stillbirths and 51 infant deaths.
Nearly 90 percent of the new cases could have been prevented with timely testing and treatment, according to the agency.
“Syphilis in babies continues to increase, and the situation is dire,” Dr. Laura Bachmann, chief medical officer at the agency’s division for prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, said in an interview. “We need to do things differently.”
“One case is an indication of a breakdown in the public health infrastructure, and now we have 3,700 cases,” she added.
The system breaks down in multiple ways. Nearly 38 percent of the 3,700 babies were born to women who received no prenatal care. Of the women who had at least one prenatal appointment, 30 percent were never tested for syphilis or were tested too late.
Public health departments used to have teams of disease-intervention specialists and nurses who made sure that pregnant women were tested and treated — even if that meant giving them shots in their homes — and traced all of their contacts, said Dr. Thomas Dobbs, dean of the University of Mississippi’s John D. Bower School of Population Health.
“You can’t dismantle the infrastructure of public health and not expect for bad things to happen,” Dr. Dobbs said. “I can’t believe that we’re at this state of health in a country as wealthy as we are.”
Calling the rise in congenital syphilis “a shameful crisis” accelerated by funding cutbacks and bureaucratic obstacles, the National Coalition of STD Directors on Tuesday demanded $1 billion in federal funding and a White House syphilis response coordinator to stem the tide.
Syphilis was nearly eliminated in the United States about 20 years ago, but rose by 74 percent, to 177,000 cases, between 2017 and 2021. Other S.T.I.s are also on the rise: In 2021, there were 1.6 million cases of chlamydia and more than 700,000 cases of gonorrhea.
The numbers were rising even before the pandemic, but in the past few years, a drop in routine preventive care, a shift to more telehealth appointments for prenatal care, and reduced clinic hours may have exacerbated the situation.
The reasons for the increase in congenital syphilis varied a bit by region. No testing, or testing too late, accounted for 56 percent of cases in the West, and inadequate treatment caused 55 percent of cases in the South.
Maricopa County has some of the highest congenital syphilis rates in the nation. Nearly half of the women in the county who had babies with syphilis received no prenatal care in 2022. Drug use, particularly of fentanyl and methamphetamine, and recent incarceration are big contributors, Dr. Taylor said.
More options for treatment, particularly ones that are affordable, would ease matters, as would vaccines and better tests. “The syphilis testing technology has really not changed much in many, many, many decades,” Dr. Bachmann said.
“There’s a lot of room for work here,” she said. “It’s obvious we have a broken system.”