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Texas is strengthening its efforts to prevent babies from being born with syphilis. A September 2018 report by the CDC indicated that the rate of congenital syphilis in Texas was the fourth highest in the country.
Texas is strengthening its efforts to prevent babies from being born with syphilis. A September 2018 report by the CDC indicated that the rate of congenital syphilis in Texas was the fourth highest in the country.
Photo: Ron Chapple Stock
Texas is strengthening its efforts to prevent babies from being born with syphilis. A September 2018 report by the CDC indicated that the rate of congenital syphilis in Texas was the fourth highest in the country.
Texas is strengthening its efforts to prevent babies from being born with syphilis. A September 2018 report by the CDC indicated that the rate of congenital syphilis in Texas was the fourth highest in the country.
Photo: Ron Chapple Stock
Texas is stepping up efforts to prevent babies from being born with syphilis, a growing state crisis highlighted Tuesday in a national report.
The Texas Department of Health has hired two new staff members, an epidemiologist and a coordinator, to lead efforts to study and attempt to reduce congenital syphilis in the state. It is also at work on a report, expected before the end of the year, evaluating the value of a 2015 national law requiring pregnant women to undergo a screening test. syphilis in the third trimester, in addition to prenatal screening.
New staff members from the health department will also assist the Houston Fetal and Childhood Morbidity Review Committee, a newly expanded three-year group to study the problem of congenital syphilis in the region. The group, which receives funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was born from a Perinatal HIV Working Group.
RELATED: Texan babies born with syphilis more than doubled last year as part of the national trend
The CDC reported Tuesday that the number of Texan babies born with syphilis has more than doubled in 2017, the largest increase of its kind in the country. The increase gave Texas the fourth highest rate in the country, up from seventh in 2016. Only Louisiana, Nevada and California recorded a higher case rate than Texas.
A total of 166 Texan babies were born with syphilis in 2017, up from 71 in 2016. There were 918 babies born across the country.
Todd Ackerman covers medicine for the Houston Chronicle. He can be reached at [email protected] or twitter.com/ChronMed.
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