Thought about congenital syphilis lately? Our legislators should. The latest data show the number of babies born in Mississippi with congenital syphilis rose by nearly 80%. From 2016 to 2022 the rate increased a thousand percent.
This quiet epidemic is rife with miscarriages, stillbirths, and babies with deformed bones, severe anemia, enlarged liver and spleen, jaundice, blindness, deafness, and meningitis. “We have a 40% fatal disease that's almost entirely cured by a single shot of penicillin,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs told Mississippi Public Broadcasting last month. “That speaks to a system issue,” said the former state health officer, now dean of the John D. Bower School of Population Health at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. “We've got to do a better job of getting moms into prenatal care and getting them tested and treated because it's really a simple solution.” Not so simple in Mississippi. While Mississippi took steps last year to require syphilis testing for pregnant women in their first trimester, third trimester, and at delivery, pregnant people must show up for the program to work. “We have a lot of delayed prenatal care in a lot of counties,” said Dr. Dobbs, explaining that a majority of women do not get prenatal care in their first trimester. He pointed to the high cost of penicillin and the lack of healthcare infrastructure and investment as likely reasons behind Mississippi’s increased numbers.
It’s just not that easy for many women to get seen and tested. “Mississippi doesn’t have the medical workforce to address a wide range of poor health outcomes,” Dr. Daniel Edney, the current state health officer told the Associated Press. In some rural areas there are about 2,000 individuals per primary care physician. And all or part of our 82 counties are deemed medically underserved. County health departments are poorly staffed – “clinical services may not be available on all days” says the MSDH website. Way back in 2012 the MEC’s Blueprint Mississippi issued a report entitled “Health Care: An Economic Driver.” In calling for a major expansion of healthcare activities, the report said, “Attempting to grow a statewide health cluster is not only bold and aggressive, but also unprecedented….To grow health care in Mississippi will require investment in human and physical infrastructure.” Adequate funding of our county health departments and expanding Medicaid would have helped this vision gain traction, strengthened our health care infrastructure, and saved many children’s lives. Instead, unprecedented underinvestment has left Mississippi health care an economic misadventure and too many babies at risk. “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward” – Psalm 127:3. Crawford is the author of A Republican’s Lament: Mississippi Needs Good Government Conservatives.
39 comments:
Dr. Thomas Dobbs told Mississippi Public Broadcasting last month. “That speaks to a system issue"...
Ah, listen-up Peeps...It's not a system issue that causes syphilis! It's a cultural issue.
When you're indiscriminately selling or giving that stuff away to any hard leg with a boner, sooner or later...BAM!
"Lack of healthcare access"? Ah, there 82 health departments in this state.
Well that would certainly explain why this obese white male in his 60's got tested for syphilis, HIV and Hep-C at a recent ER visit to UMMC that was explained away as "it was for a research program, your insurance won't be charged for the tests".
What about a lack of responsibility for risky behavior?
"While Mississippi took steps last year to require syphilis testing for pregnant people in their first trimester, third trimester, and at delivery, pregnant people must show up for the program to work."
Hey Bill,
I'd suggest they focus on the pregnant women, at least initially.
“Pregnant people”
Black and Hispanic heterosexually active women in the United States have 6.42 and 2.20 times higher syphilis diagnosis rates than White women, respectively, with the highest disparities among younger women.-NIH. Do the Miss. Demograohic math. It's cultural, and it's a specific culture that we cannot call out for murder or syphilis or drug dealing. We have to pretend it's some white guy causing this.
Why are leftists OBSESSED with medical shit?
@10:11 AM - Fear not! This new generation of tattoo-cover and septum-pierced white females are sure to get some equality with those numbers!
@10:35 am Some of us aren't leftist but are old enough to remember and/or read about why epidemics were bad. We lived to see many of them become preventable and treatable. We saw the graves in family graveyards of children who would have been our cousins or aunts or uncles who died from measles, mumps, and friends scarred badly from chicken pox. We were the first given the polio vaccine but visited our friends who were in iron lungs after our quarantine ended and we were relieved we didn't get it. Those of us with good memories who lived in cities, not in small communities that weren't exposed know that these days, travel has made it easier for sickness to travel by plane or air or even vistors in cars that go faster. We aren't leftist, we learned to get information from experts and books and knew that television and newspapers couldn't tell the " whole story"...they were a "blurb". We noticed the world became specialized and information could be shared quicker but quicker isn't always better. You are spoiled. We learned that expecting instant gratification is a sign of immaturity and that acting information from the beauty shop or barber shop or The National Enquirer was for the gullible and gossips . Worse to make a decision based on information from some stranger was at best risky and likely very foolish. We don't go to dentist or lawyer or politician to get advice on medicine or illnesses. Buyers remorse is in your future once these tariffs go through and you've given " those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" a horrible reminder. Indeed, our safeguards against plagues are weakened. We could have avoided Covid completely. We only needed to follow a manual in the White House that was already in place. We could have immediately quarantined travels for two weeks...but that's too inconvenient...instead you got worse for longer! God forbid you'd have two weeks of being stuck in a room that was heated and cooled and meals delivered...what a sacrifice for a jerk to have to make!
How does more funding of health departments lead to less unprotected sex? Or more people going to the doctor for the itch?
"expanding Medicaid" is not the solution. "eliminating fraud in Medicaid" is the solution. I am a former DHS employee and know firsthand the rampant fraud which I reported all the while witnessing those in need get miniscule services. I transferred from working one county to another county, in the latter county I wrote up so much fraud that the state office wrote my boss, the county director, asking what was going on (she was commended for the good work). I could write a book on the subject. Cut the fraud and there are ample funds for those who truly need it.
Not a single word in this article about the men/ fathers who make a major contribution to this problem.
Syphilis in adults is nearly 100% preventable by some very basic behaviors or cautions. This ain't some cold virus or affliction you get from bad luck. You don't get it from sitting by someone at school or church, and you don't get it from swimming pools , toilet seats or dirty drinking water. You get it from sex. Both men and women can have it and transmit it, so stop blaming just men. It's usually the most sketchy types of patients who get it. There are several other infectious diseases that are transmitted in the same circles. You can probably figure out what they are. You could build a free clinic on every corner of every city or every state and diseases like this would still be around. Why? because a small minority of people are just nasty. They're gonna be nasty regardless of "access" to medical care.
Hey Bill - you might need to be careful, you could be accused of copyright infringement by the Mississippi Free Press for taking their 2023 article and basically repeating it for your column.
And both you and the Free Press should be warned that an increase from 37 to 64 -- while a dramatic percentage increase is not something that should raise all the alarm bells about pending doom of the human race.
The problem appears to be the need to get these pregnant women to go to their local health department and get checked in their first trimester - there a simple shot of penicillin could cure this pending disaster. But just like the old adage says, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. We provide the free health care, and our public tax dollars provides transportation; what is lacking is the lack of giving a damn by those who are looking to have another mouth to feed so they can increase their benefit checks and EITC
11:55, I forget whether it was Gore Vidal or Dominic Dunne who opined that the National Inquirer was actually BETTER at verifying facts/sources and delivering truth, than were the mainstream papers. Thus, when I spotted a National Inquirer headline saying that 'The Ultimate Warrior' (a "professional wrestler" with an extremely prominent ... um... "manly profile") had been a rent-a-hunk prior to his wrestling career, I believed it. Later confirmation came from Malibu Colony neighbors and Eastover/Junior League ladies (who knew, back then, everything about whose husbands were flying out to LA to rent which physique champions, and all the dirt on Joe Namath and Michael Landon and which Rankin County contractors were carrying-on with which Eastover hubbies - while a lifeguard at a local club was getting league-ineligible trophy wives hooked on drugs and pimping-them-out, and the megachurch preacher who was entangled with multiple Chi-Omega-ineligible/League-ineligible married women).
I'm not sure to which "we" you think you're you're lecturing, but Kingfish readers are NOT, as our teachers used to phrase it, "Yankee factory workers who don't know any better" (this, generally, to describe the sort of people who said things like "take and", "in this day and time", and "where you're at").
Instead, dear, Kingfish's readers are more likely to be Mississippi bankers who, around 2000, became distrustful of financial newsletters, and organized their own financial intelligence network (a smart move, partly explaining why so many former Mississippians now reside in Montecito, Atherton, Greenwich and Sagaponack).
Kingfish readers, back in early 2020, read the Covid figures coming out of South Korea (a nation which we hold in high esteem), and being good with numbers, concluded that this was a non-issue. Most of us read 'The Great Barrington Declaration' when it first came out. We are thus inured to the bundle of lies predicating your little harangue.
As for tariffs, they have been considered an integral part of wise statecraft, for MILLENNIA.
Every mother who has syphilis contracted it from a syphilitic male partner.
Hey Bill. Quit screwing people you are married to and there is no syphilis problem? Healthcare access problem? Nope, its a morals problem.
I agree there are people with access who don’t seek appropriate care. However, I disagree that everyone has access and don’t seek care because they are “nasty.” There are many people who, for a variety of reasons, do not have access. And there are those who don’t seek care because of pure ignorance, not poor decision making. In my view, one of the basic obligations of government is to provide access to health care, as well as education and public information about that access. Yes it will cost money to do so, but it costs more to have large group of unhealthy people.
Work at hospital in Deep South. White girl and her baby had syphilis, but she was/is bad drug addict and most likely prostitutes. Also had black college educated girl give birth to syphilitic baby. She had no syphilis in first trimester and no drug/alcohol issue. Assume her man is most likely “on the low” or paying for the drug addict girl. I’m not wrong, statistically speaking. Condoms folks, condoms.
Just like an idiot liberal. He thinks your taxes will fix a health problem. He feels not only that government is the solution, but that government is responsible for people’s personal problems. He is wrong again.
"He pointed to the high cost of penicillin....... "
1) Penicillin has been generic as long as I can remember. IIRC it was never patented, so it has always generic. The legendary physician Barton Childs taught us his career began an a military physician in WW Two, so expense should not be a problem.
2) Cost should not be a problem in MIssissippi since all pregnant women are eligible for Medicaid, so it should be 100% covered for them while they are pregnant.
"Hey Bill. Quit screwing people you are married to and ....."
Uh, I missed this - what religion now bans sex between married partners?
Why should I be forced to pay for others healthcare?? No one pay for my health care!
If bill crawford is so concerned he can pay for it himself
How about folks try the old fashion way to stop the spread of this STD by…keeping their stuff in your britches. Works every time.
I suspect that would be a violation of patient rights. Many years ago, black men were actually GIVEN the syphilis germ "for a research program". You might think that sort of 'research' would be against the law today. Run it by an attorney.
4:42….what?
"I suspect that would be a violation of patient rights. Many years ago, black men were actually GIVEN the syphilis germ "for a research program". You might think that sort of 'research' would be against the law today. Run it by an attorney. "
You have to offer it potential subjects, and if they decline to participate you must drop it then and there or suffer severe penalties. No one can be forced to participate in a voluntary study without prior counseling (including answering any questions they may have the project).
Anyone can be tested for STD’s for free if they wanted.
So, it's somebody else's fault of course. Used to have to be tested before marriage certificate was issued.
In the US, a shortage of benzathine penicillin G since April 2016 has made treating syphilis nearly impossible, just when the illness seems to be developing into a major public health threat. Syphilis cases have more than doubled over the last decade in the US, and it’s no small thing; syphilis during pregnancy, when untreated, can leave newborns blind, deaf, and/or with serious bone malformations. It is also linked to a high rate of stillbirths and infant mortality. And benzathine penicillin G is the only antibiotic known to be effective in killing the syphilis bacterium in the fetus.
Pfizer, the sole provider of the medicine in the US, has been unable to meet the country’s full demand due to “manufacturing delays” in its plant in the US, where it formulates the drug with ingredients from an international supplier, according to the company.
Pfizer would not disclose what’s caused the shortage or where it currently sources the active ingredient for benzathine penicillin G (an investigation by the London-based group Changing Markets found Pfizer used to source penicillin from North China Pharmaceutical Group Semisyntech until at least 2015). The US Food and Drug Administration says it cannot provide details about the manufacturing delays, “as this information is considered confidential.”
Three of four companies making it still are Chinese. We have offshored everything, for Wall Street's riches and the CCP's power over us.
Thank you, 3:37, for that information! And I totally agree with those final 5 words of your post. So much of what's happening today, is about that.
Sometimes Kingfish decides to entertain us by allowing posts that should have been shit-canned.
Sometimes Kingfish decides to entertain us by allowing posts that should have been shit-canned.
"Lack of healthcare access"? Ah, there 82 health departments in this state.
Who's going to tell sporty, that they are all hurting for staff? The agency is constantly recruiting to fill vacancies.
Hello there, Sport. A 'shortage of staff' does not equate to a 'lack of healthcare'. The buildings are there, and they can plop their asses down in folding, metal chairs and wait their turn. Healthcare is available.
That these people are passing on syphilis because the state has shortchanged them by not providing instant med care is absurd. But the writer believes and pushes this nonsense.
I had to sit in a walk in clinic for hours to be seen recently. If you are really sick and want to get medicine, that is what you do.
STD riddled welfare folks want to get (free) meds for a preventable illness with no wait at the local clinic basically? Got it 9:40.
The predominance of syphilis in Mississippi ain't got jack shit to do with marriage.
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