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About twice a week, a pregnant patient turns up in Dr. Irene Stafford’s obstetrics office in Houston with syphilis, a sexually transmittable disease that affects more newborns in Texas than anywhere else in the country.
For a seasoned professional like Stafford, the sheer numbers are startling. She’s been treating congenital syphilis with increasing frequency in recent years in a city that has the state’s highest newborn infection rates....
