Syphilis cases have been surging in the US over the last several years, and ProPublica zeroes in on the most vulnerable cohort of patients—infants. The crux of the story is how a drug shortage is costing lives:
- The impact: The disease is easily spread from a pregnant woman to her fetus, and roughly 40% of babies born to women with untreated syphilis are stillborn or die as infants. The CDC reports that nearly 3,800 babies were born with syphilis in 2022—a 10-fold increase over a decade, per CNN—of whom about 300 were stillborn or died soon after. Infants that do survive "can suffer from deformed bones, excruciating pain or brain damage, and some struggle to hear, see or breathe," writes Anna Maria Barry-Jester.