Prosperity and...Syphilis?

The brief article “Rising economy spurs syphilis spike in China” appeared in Thursday’s Boston Globe, and addresses the rise of syphilis in both China and the US over the last decade. (http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/05/06/rising_economy_spurs_syphilis_spike_in_china/) AP writer Margie Mason notes that economic growth in China has freed up money for businessmen and laborers to buy sex, and that these men and the prostitutes they pay for are the cause of the disease’s rising morbidity rate. China’s newborns are especially afflicted; the rate of neonatal syphilis has grown by a factor of 8 to 57 out of every 100,000 live births. Put more simply, “Every hour a baby is born in China with syphilis.” Syphilis in adults can possibly cause eventual brain damage and death, but in infants it kills a quarter of newborns and debilitates another quarter.
Though syphilis is easily curable with penicillin, the disease does not always manifest symptoms. Screening in the US is unreliable, and no screening exists in China, so the disease can often pass undetected. Both countries had almost eradicated the disease at some point in their histories, but China’s mid-20th century ban on brothels broke down after it climbed into economic prosperity; the US has also experienced a recent climb.
I found the article to show a stark contrast with the model of disease that I had come to expect while reading Mountains Beyond Mountains. Instead of the poor contracting a disease because they didn’t have enough money for proper medical care, the well-to-do are contracting syphilis because they have enough money to pay for unsafe sex on the side before returning home to give it to their spouses and unborn children. It is disappointing that these two countries, one an established powerhouse and the other the heir apparent, should so fail to control such an easily treated disease that could, perhaps, go the way of polio.