The tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas is alarming. It's not the biggest in US history though, CDC says
The tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas is alarming. It's not the biggest in US history though, CDC says
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A yearlong outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City, Kansas area has taken local experts aback, even if it does not appear to be the largest outbreak of the disease in U.S. history as a state health official claimed last week. “We would expect to see a handful of cases every year,” said Dr. Dana Hawkinson, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Kansas Health System. But the high case counts in this outbreak were a “stark warning," he said.
The outbreak has killed two people since it started in January 2024, Kansas state health department spokeswoman Jill Bronaugh said. Health officials in Kansas say there is no threat to the general public. What is tuberculosis?. TB is caused by bacteria that lives in the people’s lungs and spreads through the air when they talk, cough or sing. It is very infectious, but only spreads when a person has symptoms.
Once it infects a person, TB can take two forms. In “active” TB, the person has a long-standing cough and sometimes bloody phlegm, night sweats, fever, weight loss and swollen glands. In “latent” TB, the bacteria hibernates in the person’s lungs or elsewhere in the body. It does not cause symptoms and does not spread to others.
Roughly a quarter of the global population is estimated to have TB, but only about 5% to 10% of those develop symptoms. How big is the tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas?. As of Jan. 24, 67 people are being treated for active TB, most of them in Wyandotte County, Bronaugh said. Another 79 have latent TB.
