Speaker 1 (00:00):
Health officials in Kansas are trying to contain the largest documented outbreak of tuberculosis in US history. As of last Friday, 67 active cases have been reported in the Kansas City area. An additional 79 people have been reported to have a latent infections, meaning TB was found, but the person was not sick. While those numbers are expected to rise, state health officials said the general risk to the public is still considered low. I want to bring in Dr. Dana Hawkinson. He's the director of Infection Control and Prevention at the University of Kansas Health System. Doctor, thank you for taking time away from your busy schedule to speak with us. First off, can you provide some more details as to what you are seeing in Kansas?
Dana Hawkinson (00:40):
Yeah, I think we have known about these cases and this outbreak really since early 2024. There was a good newspaper article about it back in August, but we have been treating and working with the public health entities and we've been treating even patients here at our health system. What I can see is that over the course of the last few months, we have seen a decrease in new cases as well as those TB infection cases, which you alluded to as well. So overall, I think we are very optimistic that we are getting to the end of this and just as you said, overall the public is at very low risk of getting exposed to this and of course, developing active tuberculosis as well.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
We like to see new cases trending downward. But doctor, how isolated is this outbreak and do you think that it could still pose a threat to the rest of the country?
Dana Hawkinson (01:37):
Yeah, so I think the easiest question, can it pose a threat to the rest of the country? Most likely not. There is very, very low risk for that. Can it pose a risk to the people in our community on the Kansas side in Wyandotte County and Johnson County where the cases have been identified? Certainly that continues to be very low risk as well. We are tracking and there is data available on the Kansas Department of Health and Environment website about these cases in particular. So we are really looking into, or they are looking into also certain communities, social groups, workplaces, all of those things. Those contribute to cases, but also easy spread among close-knit communities. Again, whether that's social communities, religious communities, ethnic communities, working communities, all of those parts play a role in this. But overall, the risk to the general public remains extremely low.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Doctor, there hasn't been a major outbreak in decades. Why now? And are there treatments or vaccines?
Dana Hawkinson (02:43):
Yeah, so I think those are very good questions. There are always various reasons why things may occur. Individuals may not want to seek care and by the time they seek care, it's too late. Certainly we have to give a lot of credit to our public health entities and our public health infrastructure. They are out there on the front line every day trying to identify cases and maybe contacts of those cases so that we can stem the tide of this outbreak, and I think they've done very well. We've also worked with them here at the University of Kansas Health System in that mode, but also in treating patients.
(03:17)
Are there treatments? There are treatments. Right now, this does not seem to be a multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, so we have our typical tuberculosis treatments. It does consist of antibiotics. We typically give the antibiotics for six months. Sometimes that can be prolonged. The first couple months are used with four drugs. The last couple months are typically a two-drug regimen. So right now we do have very good antibiotics to help treat those people with active tuberculosis disease. But also we want to treat those people with TB infection or those that may have been exposed so that later in life they don't develop active tuberculosis.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Dr. Dana Hawkinson, thank you for all of that information, sir. We appreciate it.