A yearlong outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City, Kansas area has taken local experts aback, even if it does not appear to be the largest outbreak of the disease in U.S. history as a state health official claimed last week.

A tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas has killed two people and caused at least 146 to become infected with the potentially deadly respiratory disease during one of the largest outbreaks in the nation's history.

We would expect to see a handful of cases every year,” said Dr. Dana Hawkinson, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Kansas Health System. But the high case counts in this outbreak were a “stark warning,