A tuberculosis (TB) outbreak in Kansas City has become the largest documented TB outbreak on record in the United States.
Data on the outbreak from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) show that 67 active TB cases and 79 latent cases have been reported since the beginning of 2024 in Wyandotte and Johnson counties, which are part of the greater Kansas City area.
"The current Kansas City, Kan. Metro tuberculosis (TB) outbreak is the largest documented outbreak in U.S. history, presently (since the 1950’s, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started monitoring and reporting TB cases)," KDHE communications director Jill Bronaugh told CIDRAP News in an email.
"This outbreak is still ongoing, which means that there could be more cases.".
In September 2023, KDHE researchers published a case report in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on an outbreak of multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB in Kansas City that involved 13 people.
They noted that 37 to 43 TB cases were reported annually in Kansas from 2019 through 2021.
That number rose to 52 cases in 2022, driven in part by the MDR-TB outbreak. »