Doctors Diagnose Girl, 3, With Syphilis

A 3-year-old girl has been diagnosed with a deadly sexual disease.

Stunned doctors discovered the toddler had syphilis after her worried parents noticed sores on her body.

The condition can only be contracted through sexual contact — and last night an urgent probe was under way into how the toddler from Glasgow, Scotland, had become infected.

Her seven brothers and sisters have been taken into custody while police and social workers investigate.

Syphilis can cause paralysis, dementia and death, but it is easy to cure with antibiotics. Often, a person doesn’t know they have the disease, which is why it is easy to transmit.

Syphilis Cases Rising in Fairfield County

Syphilis is on the rise in Fairfield County.

That's according to the latest statistics released by the state Department of Public Health, which also reports that among the most commonly reported sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia are on a decline in the county.

Syphilis Serious Problem Throughout Coachella Valley

Syphilis is a big problem in the Coachella Valley - the area has one of the highest rates of the sexually transmitted disease in the country.

While it looks like the numbers are starting to go down, Riverside County health officials say it's still early in the year and some cases may have not been reported yet.

Groups across the Coachella Valley are fighting the statistics. In Desert Hot Springs, teens like Aliana Rodriguez serve as peer mentors to educate their friends and classmates about teen pregnancy and STDs.

Syphilis: Beware and Be Tested!

So, it has been awhile since I have talked about one of the fastest spreading infections in Utah: syphilis.

Interestingly, syphilis was once thought to be eradicated. It had its time back in the 1930s and 1940s and was so noteworthy that it generated one of the first public health interventions at the hands of the U.S. Public Health Services. Syphilis cases were so endemic in many communities in the United States that at one point in the ’40s, an estimated on- in-four black men in the South were infected. Syphilis was also behind one of the worst moments in the history of U.S. public health services: the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments, in which health workers withheld penicillin (which can cure syphilis) from black people with the disease who were participating in a study.