Leprosy Cases on the Rise in the US and Doctors Don’t Know Why

Veuer

The U.S. Southeast has an aged illness on the rise, but it’s not COVID or the flu, but rather leprosy. Cases of the bacterial infection have been growing in the region since 2000, but in the last decade those numbers have jumped dramatically. Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.

Transcript

00:00 The US Southeast has an aged illness on the rise, but it's not COVID or the flu, but rather leprosy.

00:06 Science Alert reports the cases of the bacterial infection have been growing in the region since

00:10 2000, but in the last decade those numbers have jumped dramatically, with leprosy outbreaks

00:15 increasing by more than double in the last 10 years alone. What's worse, those cases are more

00:20 and more being linked to people born in the US and among those who don't have the typical risk

00:25 factors associated with contracting the illness, with a recent report by three dermatologists

00:30 concluding quote "those trends contribute to rising evidence that leprosy has become endemic

00:34 to the southeastern United States. Leprosy is quite easily treated by modern medicine,

00:39 but it is usually contracted abroad or from coming into contact with animals known to carry it."

00:43 The recent case study, however, indicated the man who contracted it had not traveled outside

00:48 the country, nor had he come into contact with those animals. And it's not just leprosy that

00:52 is making its endemic debut in the south. The CDC also recently announced that malaria has also

00:58 shown up there as well, with four cases of locally acquired malaria being discovered in Florida,

01:03 the first US acquired cases in around 20 years.

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