AIDS Healthcare Foundation warns of 'Syphilis Tsunami'

AIDS Healthcare Foundation recently launched an outdoor advertising campaign, with new billboards warning of a “Syphilis Tsunami."

AHF’s “Syphilis Tsunami” campaign references the world-renowned landscape print “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Katsushika Hokusai to draw attention to dramatically rising rates of syphilis across the country.

In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted an estimated 33 percent increase of infectious syphilis cases from 2014-16. 

The national response needed to this growing public health crisis is made even more urgent by the fact that Pfizer, the manufacturer of Bicillin L-A — Penicillin G benzathine—  the preferred medication used to treat syphilis and the only treatment recommended by the CDC for pregnant women with the infection, has refused to meet the medical demand through constant drug shortages and multiple stockouts of the treatment over the past year.

In May, health advocates from AHF and other groups took to the streets in New York City to protest outside Pfizer’s corporate headquarters to draw attention to the drug company’s third drug stockout of Bicillin L-A in less than one year.

“For several years, AHF has been sounding the alarm on the rising rates of syphilis and other STDs through our outdoor advertising campaigns, including our ‘Syphilis Explosion’ billboards that made headlines around the world, and yet we continue to see an inadequate response from the CDC and the drug companies to address this growing public health threat,” said AHF president Michael Weinstein.

Weinstein added, “Clearly, we need to keep making the public aware of syphilis and encourage sexually active individuals to get tested for STDs regularly and be treated. By posting these billboards in highly visible areas, we also want to keep pressure on public health officials to push Pfizer to produce sufficient quantities of the medication needed to address the syphilis epidemic.” 

“Pfizer, which has the exclusive patent on Bicillin L-A, is the third largest drug company in the world, with more than $50 billion in revenue reported in 2016, yet, somehow this American pharmaceutical powerhouse has been unable or unwilling to prepare for, and/or meet the demand by medical providers, pharmacies—and patients—for its syphilis medication for nearly the entire past year,” said Jessica Reinhart, associate director of community outreach for AHF. “We will continue to call on Pfizer to right this ship or allow a generic drug maker to begin manufacturing and selling the medication.”