Deneshun Graves, a disease intervention specialist with the Houston Health Department, fills out paperwork as she walks back to her pickup truck after trying to contact a client, who wasn’t home in Houston on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. Disease intervention specialists often link infected mothers and their partners with care for syphilis to help prevent congenital syphilis in the baby.
Disease intervention specialists often link infected mothers and their partners with care for syphilis, which has mild symptoms for adults, like fever and sores. Doing so in a timely manner can prevent congenital syphilis. The specialists also can help pregnant patients find prenatal care. The Houston Health Department is in the midst of what it calls a “rapid community outreach response” because of syphilis cases increased by 128% among women from 2019 to 2022, and congenital syphilis cases went from 16 in 2019 to 151 in 2021.
congenital syphilis cases, which a recently published study showed rose tenfold between 2016 and 2022 He said the state has been “challenged because of limited state funding” and will need to “cannibalize resources from every program we can so that we can increase our diagnostic rates or treatment rates, and then close the loop with our investigations.”: 232.3 cases per 100,000 live births.