The China Daily said china had 32,000 new reported infections in May alone, including two deaths. The latest reports show 30 percent increase in syphilis infections each year.
The increase reflects the country’s staggering economic growth, providing both businessmen and migrant laborers more cash and opportunity to pay for unsafe sex while away from home.
Syphilis is a bacterial infection which can be easily treated with antibiotics if diagnosed early, but if left untreated can lead to paralysis, blindness and death.
Pregnant women are also increasingly passing the disease to their children, with more than one baby with congenital syphilis born every hour in 2010.Every hour a baby is born in China with syphilis.
“Syphilis has returned to China with a vengeance. The data demonstrates a syphilis epidemic of such scope and magnitude that it will require terrific effort to intervene,” report co-author Dr. Myron S. Cohen, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, said in a prepared statement.
In recent years, China’s Communist government has made huge strides in openly addressing the spread of HIV, which is easier to transmit and catch if other infections exist. But social stigma remains a huge barrier for people infected with any sexually transmitted disease, making it important for tests and treatment to be moved out of doctors’ offices and into brothels, clubs and communities where high-risk groups gather.
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