Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian Online - January 17, 2007
Syphilis epidemic: China is suffering its biggest wave of syphilis in more than 50 years as a cocktail of changing sexual mores and weakening public healthcare takes its toll on the world's most populous nation.
The incidence rate of the sexually transmitted -- and occasionally fatal -- disease has surged more than 30-fold in less than 10 years, according to a new study published in the Lancet.
Syphilis was almost wiped out in China between 1960 and 1980 thanks to a huge public health campaign. It was one of the proudest boasts of the Communist Party after it took power in 1949 with a promise to wipe out capitalist decadence and disease.
But it has surged back in the wake of economic and social reforms that have undermined the health system and led to a burgeoning sex industry. Because the disease was absent for such a long time, immunities are low but young people are more vulnerable because they are now losing their virginity earlier, marrying later and having more partners than in the past.
"Syphilis has returned to China with a vengeance. The data demonstrates a syphilis epidemic of such scope and magnitude that it will require terrific effort to intervene," said lead researcher Myron S Cohen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.
Chinese academics said their country had stepped up its efforts to counter syphilis and HIV/Aids in recent years, but more needed to be done.
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