The number of babies born with syphilis in Mississippi has risen 10-fold over the last several years, according to a new report.
Between 2016 and 2022, congenital syphilis cases rose from 10 to 110, marking a 1,000% increase, according to a report from the John D. Bower School of Population Health at University of Mississippi Medical Center.
For the report, researchers looked at hospital discharge data from the Mississippi State Department of Health and the Mississippi Hospital Association.
The great part is: the medication to treat this during pregnancy is one (1) dose of Penicillin G given as an IM injection that costs about $50 on the outside. So for the price of routine pre-natal care that women should be getting already plus an extra fifty bucks, we can prevent tens of thousands of dollars in extra medical costs and avert the possibility of stillbirth, peri-natal death, and lifelong disability from congenital syphilis.
That all sounds great until the GOP decides to start banning antibiotics because you should be taking ivermectin to treat your syphilis infections instead.
That nonsense is so annoying because ivermectin really only works as an antiparasitic or antifungal drug in very particular kinds of infections. I thought it would eventually die out, but I underestimated the stupidity of Q-people.
(Edit: I also just looked it up, and ivermectin has not been extensively studied for use during pregnancy. There was one observational study that noted a questionably significant increase in spontaneous abortion, but could not definitively determine the cause to be the ivermectin. So it’s possible that the GOP would be pushing an “abortion drug” at that point.)