Washoe County has seen an alarming emergence of congenital syphilis. Reno Public Radio’s Anh Gray explains.
Congenital syphilis is a bacterial STD passed from an infected mother to her baby during pregnancy.
Angela Penny is a public health nurse with the Washoe County Health Districtand says there has been four cases of congenital syphilis since the end of 2014. Infections while treatable, can also be life-threatening.
“Outcomes include fetal demise, which is the death of an unborn baby, neonatal deaths, so death shortly after birth,” Penny explains, “they can have long-term health problems including deafness and neurological problems and also bone deformities.”
The typical treatment in babies is to administer penicillin intravenously. Penny attributes the resurgence of congenital syphilis to a spike in infections in the general population.
“It started rearing its ugly head in the population of men-who-have-sex-with-men,” Penny says. “So what we’re seeing is just because of the increase and the inevitable jump to the heterosexual population; we now have congenital syphilis.”
Nevada is ranked7thin the country for the rate of syphilis infections.