Children born with syphilis

FOUR children in the last three years were born here with syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease they inherited from their mothers.

Director of the National Disease Surveillance Centre, Dr Darina O’Flanagan, said inherited sexually transmitted disease was a rarity in Ireland and she never came across a child with congenital syphilis when a young doctor.

At the launch of the NDSC’s 2002 report, Dr O’Flanagan expressed particular concern about the increase in both syphilis and gonorrhoea, two “Victorian” diseases she once thought were consigned to history.