Syphilis, virtually eradicated after the founding New China in 1949, has become a viciously-growing epidemic there, driven by prostitution, internal migration and poor health controls, a new study warns.

In 1993, the reported rate of syphilis in China was a mere 0.2 cases per 100,000.

A Chinese prostitute is caught in bed with two men at a brothel in Guangzhou, July 2003. Syphilis has become a viciously-growing epidemic there, driven by prostitution, internal migration and poor health controls, a new study warns.[AFP]

In 2005, it had surged to 5.7 cases per 100,000, a figure that may well be a serious under-estimate, according to the paper by Chinese epidemiologists.

In addition, the number of babies born with syphilis has shot up. Congenital syphilis occurred among just 0.01 per 100,000 live births in 1991; in 2005 it was 19.68 -- an annual rise of nearly 72 percent over that time.

"Surveillance data and focussed reports from throughout China provide compelling evidence of a substantial and worsening syphilis epidemic in individuals at high risk and in the general population," the research says.

"The spread of syphilis in China has been insidious and has only recently attracted the attention it deserves."

The paper, written by experts from China's National Centre for STD (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) Control, appears in Saturday's issue of the British health journal The Lancet.

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by a bacterium, Treponema pallidum, that can be treated by antibiotics. If untreated, it can cause genital ulcers, damage the cardiovascular and nervous systems and brain, affect fertility and foetal health.

By the time New China was founded in 1949, China had one of the biggest syphilis epidemics in history: one person in 20 in some large cities had the disease, and the rate was two to three percent among dwellers in the countryside.

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