Tuberculosis erupted throughout the year in Kansas City, Kansas, local experts, even if it was not the largest outbreak of the disease in the history of the United States, as the state health official claimed last week.
“We expect to see a handful of cases every year,” said Dr. Dana Hawkson, a infectious disease doctor at Kansas University’s health system. But the high issue in this fascism was a “flagrant warning”.
Gel Bruneo, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health, said that the outbreak had killed two people since it started in January 2024. Health officials in Kansas say there is no threat to the general public.
What is tuberculosis?
It causes tuberculosis due to the bacteria that live in my lungs and spread in the air when they speak, cough or sing. It is very infectious, but only spreads when a person suffers from symptoms.
Once someone is infected, tuberculosis can take two shapes. In “active” tuberculosis, the person has a long -term cough and sometimes bloody phlegm, night sweating, fever, weight loss and swollen glands. In “latent” tuberculosis, bacteria are preceded in the lungs of a person or anywhere in the body. It does not cause symptoms and does not spread to others.
Nearly a quarter of the world population is estimated to have tuberculosis, but about 5 % to 10 % of the symptoms.
What is the size of the outbreak of tuberculosis in Kansas?
As of January 24, 67 people are treated for active tuberculosis, most of them in Wandi County, Bruno said. Another 79 have underlying tuberculosis.
The number of temporary mandate for 2024 shows 79 cases of active activists and 213 underlying cases in the two provinces, where the outbreak of Wyendot and Johnson occurs. Not all of these are linked to the outbreak and Bruno did not respond to the requests for clarification.
“We are heading in the right direction at the present time,” said Ashley Jose, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Health and Environment in Kansas,.
Is tuberculosis spread in Kansas, the largest in the history of the United States?
Health officials in Kansas described the outbreak of “the largest documented outbreak in the history of the United States” because the American centers for disease control and prevention began to calculate cases in the fifties.
But a spokesman for the Disease Control Center on Tuesday refuted this claim, pointing to the outbreak of tuberculosis at least more in modern history. In one, the disease spread through Georgia shelter without shelter. Public health workers have identified more than 170 cases of active tuberculosis and more than 400 underlying cases from 2015 to 2017. In 2021, the disease was spread across the country with polluted tissues used in orthopedic transplants caused by 113 patients.
How is tuberculosis treated?
Tuberculosis is treated with antibiotics for several months. The vaccine is available, but it is generally not recommended in the United States because the risk of infection is low and the vaccine can interfere with the doctors testing to diagnose the disease.
Tuberculosis is a much greater problem outside the United States
Tuberculosis is a major cause of the death of infectious diseases all over the world, and it was high.
In 2023, bacteria killed 1.25 million people worldwide and hit 8 million, the highest number since the World Health Organization began to follow up.
While tuberculosis was a much greater risk in the United States in previous generations, it was heading again in recent years. In 2023, there were more than 9,600 cases in the country, the highest in a decade, according to the Center for Disease Control.
