Congenital syphilis has killed 10 babies in Victoria since the sexually transmitted disease returned to the state in 2017, 25 years after it was eradicated.
Victoria’s Department of Health last month began recommending all women get tested three times during pregnancy, up from the previous one, in an effort to ensure sufferers are treated early and prevent the infection from being passed through the placenta.
There have been 19 cases of congenital syphilis in the past eight years, with 10 resulting in the death of a child, Victoria’s deputy chief health officer, Dr Christian McGrath said, adding that about 40% of babies born to infected mothers would die and another 40% would be infected.
“It can have pretty severe consequences both for the person in the long term, but also for the unborn child,” he told The Age.
The disease occurs when a syphilis infection is passed from a mother to her baby during pregnancy or childbirth, and can cause miscarriage and stillbirth, and health problems including organ, brain or nerve damage, bone and tooth deformities, eye lesions, deafness and developmental abnormities.
According to health authorities, the women most at risk are those with overseas sexual contacts (particularly from countries where STIs are common), the indigenous, intravenous drug users, prostitutes, those with homosexual partners, and those with more than one sexual partner.
Dr Nisha Khot, vice-president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said she was shocked by the number of pregnant women she now needed to treat for the once-eradicated disease.
“It wasn’t something I was expecting in this day and age,” she said.
“We thought it had disappeared from the Western world.”
Syphilis cases have doubled in Victoria over the past decade, from 637 in 2014 to 1,450 in 2024, with more than 280 infections already recorded in this year.
The trend among women of reproductive age is even worse, and Dr McGrath said there had been an increase in sexually transmitted diseases “across the board”, including gonorrhoea and chlamydia.
Victoria’s chief health officer, Dr Tarun Weeramanthri told health practitioners in February that pregnant women should now be treated at the first antenatal visit, at 26-28 weeks and at 36 weeks or birth (whichever is earlier).
The syphilis warning comes after Victorians were told not to use public swimming pools for two weeks after having diarrhoea following a huge spike in cryptosporidiosis infections.
In 2024 there were a record 2,349 cryptosporidiosis cases reported to the department – a 233% increase on the previous year.
Header image: A colourised electron micrograph of the bacteria that cause syphilis (NIAID – https://www.flickr.com/photos/54591706@N02/53151295418/, CC BY 2.0, Link. cropped).
