From The Economist:
The Dutch called it the Spanish disease; Russians the Polish disease; Turks, the Christian disease and Tahitians, the British disease. But syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease (STD), seems more of a Chinese disease these days. In China the chance of catching it is now more than 28 times greater than it was in 1993. Syphilis cases are increasing in many countries but the extent of China’s rise, in relative and absolute terms, dwarfs figures from America, Canada and Europe. That is the conclusion of a study by Zhi-Qiang Chen and his colleagues at China’s National Centre for STD and Leprosy Control published in the latest issue of the Lancet, a medical journal. Both the broader implications of the increase, and its details, are troubling.[Full Text]
