"Right now you still feel healthy, but this bacteria is still in your body,"

No, Angelica said, her lips pursed with disgust.

The hardest to reach and most vulnerable populations are the ones left suffering, after everyone else looks away.

throw money at a problem — whether that's Ebola, Zika or COVID-19. Then, as fear ebbs, so does the attention and motivation to finish the task.

30% of patients, capable of wreaking horror on a wide range of organ systems

The Great Imitator: It can look like any number of diseases.

Black, Hispanic and Native American babies are disproportionately at risk.

young man

dementia

deformed bones or damaged brains, and they can struggle to hear, see or breathe.

quadrupled: 1,870 babies were born with the disease; 128 died. Case counts from 2020

With the introduction of penicillin, cases began to plummet. Twice, the CDC has announced efforts to wipe out the disease — once in the 1960s and again in 1999.

1938 passed the National Venereal Disease Control Act, which created grants for states to set up clinics and support testing and treatment. Other than a short-lived funding effort during World War I,

to historically low rates, with 80% of counties reporting zero cases.

fundamental failure of public health capacity,"

double the case count of five years prior.

gay men and later, heterosexuals. Cases in women started accelerating in 2013, followed shortly by increasing numbers of babies born with syphilis.

129,800 syphilis cases were recorded in 2019

relaxed safer sex practices after the advent of potent HIV combination therapies, increased methamphetamine use drove riskier behavior and an explosion of online dating made it hard to track and test sexual partners

public health system is failing.

Since then, funding has remained anemic.

By 2013, as elimination seemed less and less viable, the CDC changed its focus to ending congenital syphilis only.

States in the South and West have seen the highest syphilis rates in recent years.

she feared catching the coronavirus and skipped prenatal care.

The department also doesn't have anyone who can administer penicillin injections in the field;

The decisions are often politically driven and can be detached from actual health needs.

three weekly shots of penicillin at least 30 days before she gave birth, it was likely that the infection would be wiped out

Syphilis had spread through her bones and lungs.

hair loss is a symptom of syphilis.

Then, there are the miscarriages, the stillbirths

doable and necessary to prevent newborn cases.

Belarus, Bermuda, Cuba, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka are among countries recognized by the World Health Organization for eliminating congenital syphilis.

[We] brought it down from 1,700 babies born each year with perinatal HIV to less than 40 per year today,"

40% chance the baby would die.

Six states have no prenatal screening requirement at all. Even in states that require three tests, public health officials say that many physicians aren't aware of the requirements.

"There's no incentive for a private physician to stock a dose that could expire before it's used, so they often don't have it.

penis. There's one of a tongue, marred by mucus-lined lesions. And there's one of a newborn baby,

Treponema pallidum bacteria