Sadequa Shahrook, Rintaro Mori, Tumendemberel Ochirbat, Harumi Gomi

Each year about two million pregnant women are infected with preventable syphilis infection, mostly in developing countries. Despite the expansion of antenatal syphilis screening programmes over the past few decades, syphilis continues to be a major public health concern in developing countries. Point-of-care syphilis testing may be a useful strategy to substantially prevent syphilis-associated perinatal mortality and other negative consequences in resource-poor settings. However, the evidence on effectiveness has been generated mostly from observational study designs or has been reported as a mixed-intervention effect.