Increasing cases of tuberculosis in US, UK are a canary in a coalmine

With one of the largest tuberculosis outbreaks in US history, Kansas has more to worry about than its recent Super Bowl defeat. During the past year, 67 people with TB have been detected. This comes on the back of increasing rates of TB in the US year on year since the start of the COVID pandemic.

Rather than a relic of the Victorian era, TB is the world’s most enduring pandemic, killing more people each year than any other single infection. While more common in low-income countries, TB continues to be found in more deprived communities, cities, prisons, homeless populations, and in black, Asian and Indigenous people, including in wealthy countries such as the US and UK.

TB outbreaks in wealthy countries act as a canary in a coalmine, reflecting cracks in national public health systems. More broadly, TB outbreaks in any setting have deeper implications for the struggle to end TB globally.

TB is an airborne infection that doesn’t respect borders. With increasing mass movement, including due to climate change and war, the maxim “TB anywhere is TB everywhere” is more resonant today than ever.

In the UK, TB rates consistently declined between 2011 and 2020. But, like the US, this decline reversed since Covid-19 emerged in early 2020.

In 2023, there was a 13% increase in the number of people who became unwell with TB in England, compared with 2022.

At 9.5 people with TB per 100,000 people per...

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