A yearlong outbreak of tuberculosis (TB) in the Kansas City, Kansas, area has left at least two people dead and sparking claims that it is the worst such episode in U.S. history.
Some Kansas health officials called the outbreak “the largest documented outbreak in U.S. history” since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began counting TB cases in the 1950s. However, the CDC has disputed that claim.
A spokesperson for the CDC told The Epoch Times on Wednesday that the Kansas outbreak is not the largest in U.S. history,” noting that an outbreak in Georgia between 2015 and 2017 resulted in “more than 170 cases of TB disease and over 400 cases of inactive TB.”
Later, a nationwide outbreak of tuberculosis involving 113 patients occurred in 2021 “after surgical implantation of contaminated bone allografts,” the spokesperson said.
During the current outbreak, the spokesperson said, four CDC staff are “providing on-site assistance including contact investigation, testing and screening, and working with community leaders on health education.”
Details of the Outbreak
In an update on Wednesday, the Kansas Division of Public Health
said the outbreak is mainly in Wyandotte County, and it is a “very low risk to the general public, including the surrounding counties.”
So far, 60 people have been confirmed to have active tuberculosis in Wyandotte County and another seven cases were reported in Johnson County since 2024. Meanwhile, the number of latent tuberculosis cases since 2024 is 79, with 77 in Wyandotte County and two in Johnson County.
The outbreak has killed two people since it started in January 2024, Kansas state health department spokeswoman Jill Bronaugh said.
The state health agency has not elaborated on the cause of the outbreak or if it is centered around a specific facility.
The situation is improving, however. “We are trending in the right direction right now,” Ashley Goss, deputy secretary at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, told the state Senate’s Committee on Public Health and Welfare on Jan. 21.
What Is Tuberculosis?
Often called TB, tuberculosis is caused by a type of bacteria that can be spread through prolonged contact with another person who has an active infection, meaning they are showing symptoms of the illness. People with latent tuberculosis cannot spread it to others, although they can if their disease turns active, officials say.
In the active form, the person has a long-standing cough and sometimes bloody phlegm, night sweats, fever, weight loss, and swollen glands. In the latent form, the bacteria hibernate in the person’s lungs or elsewhere in the body, causing no symptoms.
Tuberculosis can also spread outside the lungs to other parts of the body, which may present different symptoms.
Caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the disease has been known since ancient times and was documented by Greek and Roman writers and physicians.
The infection is treated with antibiotics over the course of several months. A vaccine is available, but generally not recommended in the United States because the risk of infection is low and getting the vaccine can interfere with the test that doctors use to diagnose the disease.
Bigger Problem Outside the US
While rare in the United States, tuberculosis is considered the leading cause of infectious deaths worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO)
estimates that it killed 1.25 million people around the world and infected 8 million in 2023.
“This represents a notable increase from 7.5 million reported in 2022, placing TB again as the leading infectious disease killer in 2023, surpassing COVID-19,” the WHO said in a statement late last year.
A report released in 2023 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealed that thousands of illegal immigrants under the age of 18 who were diagnosed with latent tuberculosis were released across the United States between June 2022 and late May 2023.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
