Stephan: I haven't heard anyone mention Syphilis in years, nor read anything about it, and I find this investigative report by ProPublica yet another appalling condemnation of America's illness profit system. I had no idea, and I doubt you did either that, "The alarms are now clamoring. In the United States, more than 129,800 syphilis cases were recorded in 2019, double the case count of five years prior. In the same time period, cases of congenital syphilis quadrupled: 1,870 babies were born with the disease; 128 died." All this because so great is the control of the "health" industries over a corrupt Congress, thanks to Citizens United, that what passes for healthcare in the U.S. is not actually about healthcare and wellbeing, it is all about profit.
Mai Yang, who works for the Fresno County Department of Public Health, holds educational images from the CDC that she shares with people to show them what syphilis can look like, including the “blueberry muffin” rash that is common with babies born with the infection. Credit: Talia Herman
The United States’ inability to curb a treatable sexually transmitted disease shows the failures of a cash-strapped public health system. Increasingly, newborns are paying the price.
When Mai Yang is looking for a patient, she travels light. She dresses deliberately — not too formal, so she won’t be mistaken for a police officer; not too casual, so people will look past her tiny 4-foot-10 stature and youthful face and trust her with sensitive health information. Always, she wears closed-toed shoes, “just in case I need to run.”
Yang carries a stack of cards issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that show what happens when the Treponema pallidum bacteria invades a patient’s body. There’s a photo of an angry red sore on a penis. There’s one of a tongue, […]
It would be interesting to see a racial breakdown of this data. Why? there are certain ethnic and racial groups that clearly neglect their health, education, and social responsibilities, and then blame the consequences on “racism”.
It would be interesting to see a racial breakdown of this data. Why? there are certain ethnic and racial groups that clearly neglect their health, education, and social responsibilities, and then blame the consequences on “racism”.