Mississippi Today
Emergency order: Doctors must test for syphilis in Mississippi pregnancies
Emergency order: Doctors must test for syphilis in Mississippi pregnancies
Mississippi now requires physicians to test patients for syphilis during pregnancy as a response to the alarming rate in the state of children being born with the infection, according to a recently issued emergency order.
Mississippi was one of six states that did not require syphilis screenings by law. Meanwhile, the state in six years ending in 2021 had more than a 900% increase in babies born with syphilis – a sexually transmitted disease that can be passed to an infant during pregnancy and lead to developmental issues and sometimes death.
On Wednesday, the Mississippi Board of Health issued a 120-day emergency order with plans to permanently change testing rules in the state during that period. The board will vote on those rule changes during their July meeting.
“This is a winnable battle for us,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Beyer told the Board of Health during Wednesday's meeting. “We have seen a lot of ups and downs with syphilis over the years … we have shown before we can make an impact on the rates of syphilis.”
The state's order calls for physicians and practitioners offering prenatal care to test all pregnancies during the first trimester or during the first prenatal appointment and again in the third trimester and during delivery to ensure treatment for positive cases follows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and that cases found during pregnancy are reported to the state Department of Health.
Beyer said the repeated testing is to ensure “we're not letting a case that can be treated … slip through the cracks.”
Without mandatory screenings, some mothers are shocked to learn they have the disease. Even if they don't have symptoms, the infection can still detrimentally affect their child.
Penicillin treatments in the first trimester for someone with syphilis leads to the most positive outcome for the child at birth. Untreated, babies can be born with life-long complications and major malformations.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1892
April 22, 1892
Fiery civil rights pioneer Vernon Johns was born in Darlington Heights, Virginia, in Prince Edward County. He taught himself German and other languages so well that when the dean of Oberlin College handed him a book of German scripture, Johns easily passed, won admission and became the top student at Oberlin College.
In 1948, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, hired Johns, who mesmerized the crowd with his photographic memory of scripture. But he butted heads with the middle-class congregation when he chastised members for disliking muddy manual labor, selling cabbages, hams and watermelons on the streets near the state capitol.
He pressed civil rights issues, helping Black rape victims bring their cases to authorities, ordering a meal from a white restaurant and refusing to sit in the back of a bus. No one in the congregation followed his lead, and turmoil continued to rise between the pastor and his parishioners.
In May 1953, he resigned, returning to his family farm. His successor? A young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr.
James Earl Jones portrayed the eccentric pastor in the 1994 TV film, “Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story,” and historian Taylor Branch profiled Johns in his Pulitzer-winning “Parting the Waters; America in the King Years 1954-63.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
Podcast: Rep. Sam Creekmore says Legislature is making progress on public health, mental health reforms
House Public Health Chairman Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, tells Mississippi Today's Geoff Pender and Taylor Vance he's hopeful he and other negotiators can strike a deal on Medicaid expansion to address dire issues in the unhealthiest state.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1966
April 21, 1966
Milton Olive III became the first Black soldier awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War.
Olive had known tragedy in his life, his mother dying when he was only four hours old. He spent his early youth on Chicago's South Side and then moved to Lexington, Mississippi, where he stayed with his grandparents.
In 1964, he attended one of the Mississippi Freedom Schools, and he joined the work in Freedom Summer, registering Black voters. Concerned that he might be killed, his grandmother sent him back to Chicago, where he joined the military on his 18th birthday.
“You said I was crazy for joining up,” he wrote. “Well, I've gone you one better. I'm now an official U.S. Army Paratrooper.”
He joined the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade and became known as “Preacher” for his quiet demeanor and his tendency to avoid cursing. On Oct. 22, 1965, helicopters dropped Olive and the 3rd Platoon of Company B into a dense jungle near Saigon. They returned fire on the Viet Cong, who retreated. As the soldiers pursued the enemy, a grenade was thrown into the middle of them. Olive grabbed the grenade and fell on it, absorbing the blast with his body.
“It was the most incredible display of selfless bravery I ever witnessed,” the platoon commander said.
Olive saved his fellow soldier's lives. Then-President Lyndon B. Johnson presented the medal to his father and stepmother, and he has since been honored with a park and a junior college named for him.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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