Syphilis is a preventable and curable bacterial sexually transmitted infection. It is transmitted during oral, vaginal, and anal sex, in pregnancy, and through blood transfusion. If untreated, syphilis can cause serious health issues affecting multiple organs and systems, and in the most severe cases, death. Many people with syphilis do not have symptoms or do not notice them, meaning that regular testing is important for sexually active people.
In 2024, there were 5,866 diagnoses of syphilis in Australia, representing a doubling in the number of diagnoses over 10 years.
Syphilis and pregnancy
Syphilis can be passed on from parent to child (congenital syphilis) during pregnancy. When not treated or treated late during pregnancy, syphilis can result is serious adverse birth outcomes including death of the infant. Adverse birth outcomes occur in 50 to 80 percent of pregnancies where there was inadequate treatment for syphilis received.
Congenital syphilis cases have more than doubled since 2015, with 34 tragic infant deaths attributed to congenital syphilis in the past decade.
You can explore the latest syphilis data from Australia in the interactive data dashboards below.
These dashboards are best viewed on desktop.