A total of 478 syphilis seroreactive blood donors from Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Kumasi, Ghana were confirmed with the Ortho-Vitros Syphilis TP test as the gold standard.

Of these, 471 consented syphilis seroreactive blood donors were interviewed to determine past or present clinical manifestations of yaws and syphilis (a response rate of 98.3%).

A total of 28 (5.9%) donors gave a history of skin lesions and sores.

Four of the 28 donors (14.3%), who were all male and RPR-positive, recalled a diagnosis of syphilis with reported lesions/bumps on the skin and slow-healing sores, but only one of them had had these symptoms before the age of 15 years.

These data suggest that a clinical history of yaws is not frequent among syphilis-positive blood donors. However, syphilis symptoms were also not reported frequently.