RALEIGH -- Health departments in North Carolina concerned with the outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus are also worried about a dramatic increase in the number of syphilis cases.
Cases of syphilis in the state have nearly doubled in the past year: 684 in the first nine months, compared with 359 cases for the same period a year earlier.
Statistics show that numbers are up across almost all age and racial groups, including teenage girls and blacks.
Syphilis had largely been contained in North Carolina, which reported thousands of cases annually throughout the 1990s.
Helping to stem the problem was the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC funded a syphilis elimination plan that targeted 28 counties, including five in North Carolina.
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