Health officials in Kansas say they are facing an “unprecedented” spread of tuberculosis that has affected at least 146 people in the northeast part of the state.
As of Friday, 67 people are being treated for active tuberculosis (TB) cases in the Kansas City area, according to Jill Bronaugh, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, in an email to HuffPost on Monday.
There are sixty current cases in Wyandotte County and seven in Johnson County.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, which cause TB, can be seen under a microscope.
There are 79 new inactive infections reported in the same areas, with 77 in Wyandotte County and two in Johnson County. These people do not show any signs, according to Bronaugh.
“This outbreak in the metro area is the biggest one recorded in U.S. history so far,” she said. This record goes back to the 1950s when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began tracking and reporting tuberculosis (TB) cases, she said.
Bronaugh mentioned that there might be more cases that haven’t been proven yet.
Last year, KDHE recorded 79 active cases and 213 latent cases in both counties from an outbreak and non-outbreak. She mentioned that there have been two known TB deaths linked to this outbreak.
Ashley Goss, the Deputy Secretary for Public Health, updated the state’s Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee last week about the spread, describing it as “unprecedented.”
The CDC is currently in Kansas to help the health department deal with the problem that the KDHE started addressing last summer, she said.
“We are headed in the right direction.” There will be more information about that soon. “I hope we can wrap this up soon,” she said on Tuesday.
CDC representatives did not reply right away to HuffPost’s request for comments on Monday.
TB spreads through germs in the air when a person with the infection coughs, talks, or sings. The disease mainly targets the lungs, but it can also impact other areas of the body, including the brain, kidneys, or spine, as stated by the CDC.
Not everyone who gets affected becomes ill. Some people can be identified with inactive TB when they have a small number of live bacteria in their body that are not currently causing illness.
People with inactive cases of the disease don’t show signs and can’t spread it to others, but they still need treatment. This helps stop the bacteria, which can stay in the body for years without causing symptoms, from becoming active, according to the CDC.
Kansas’ health department is providing free TB treatment to people who do not have insurance or whose insurance does not cover the treatment.
The signs of the disease include a persistent cough, fever, chest pain, chills, coughing up blood or phlegm, tiredness, weight loss, reduced appetite, and sweating at night. TB is one of the top common diseases that can lead to death if not treated.
Even though there is a vaccine for tuberculosis (TB), it is not widely given in the U.S. This is because the country has one of the lowest rates of TB in the world, according to the CDC and World Health Organization.
Outside the U.S., 98% of all TB cases occur in low- and middle-income countries. According to the WHO, the countries with the most cases are India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, and Pakistan.
The most recent increase in cases in the U.S. was in 2023, with 9,633 documented cases, the highest number in ten years. Case numbers went up for all age groups and for both U.S.-born and non-U.S.-born people. However, the increase was still bigger among non-U.S.-born individuals and those from racial and ethnic minority groups.
U.S. health officials explained that the increase in cases could be due to a rise in infections worldwide the year before and that resources meant for tuberculosis (TB) programs in the U.S. were stretched thin and redirected to tackle COVID-19.
The CDC said that these factors, along with changes in travel patterns, likely caused the drop in cases in 2020, followed by an increase in cases since then.
Leave a Comment