More than 3 percent of Native babies born in South Dakota last year had the curable — but potentially fatal — disease.
It was 2022 when pediatrician Tom Herr realized just how many babies on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota were already infected with syphilis when they took their first breaths. He was seeing more and more patients who’d spent their first weeks in a tangle of tubes that pumped antibiotics into their tiny bodies. Some had died in the womb. With growing alarm, Herr and other health officials...
