Our findings confirm that Buenaventura has a very high incidence of CS and demonstrate that existing antenatal care gestational syphilis programs are flawed. Prevention strategies should emphasize enhanced early syphilis screening in pregnancy, preferably through the implementation of point-of-care testing in the community and same-day treatment with at least 1 dose of penicillin.

Poster presentations Results Out of the 30 infants born to syphilis seropositive mothers, we found 3 babies with different IgG WB profiles from those of their own mothers. Two out these three newborns had also positive IgM WB result. Routine serological testing results of all the 30 newborns showed similar values to those of their own mothers. Conclusion The use of comparative IgG WB test enabled us to diagnose CS in three cases in which the infection would have not been detected by classical serology techniques. Therefore the routine use of comparative IgG WB assay at birth on newborn-mother pairs could be a welcome addition to the conventional laboratory methods used for the diagnosis of CS.