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Kansas City physicians, along with local, state and regional leaders, were all in one room on Tuesday afternoon to ramp up conversations about medical safety during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Over the last few years, safety has been a central topic across the metro regarding the World Cup. Law enforcement agencies have shared how they are training, raising funds and bringing in additional personnel for more boots on the ground. But another big focus of public safety is healthcare.
“Right now, we’re looking at possibly somewhere between a six to eight percent surge in terms of healthcare needs,” U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids said.
In addition to making sure the Kansas City metropolitan area has enough doctors and supplies, leaders are asking questions such as, “How do we get people to the hospital when they do not speak the language?”
“There are lots of efforts being made to ensure that we’ve got translation services as well as signage and those types of things. And then when you look in the app, there’s also the ability for people to see information in various languages,” Davids said.
Davids helped secure $625 million in federal funding for public safety and health. Kansas City will get $59 million of it.
“We have every single health system in the entire region, every hospital, all involved and working on this planning team together so that we can pull this off,” Dr. Bryan Beaver, EMS physician advisor with The University of Kansas Health System, said. “We’re actually used to taking care of those kinds of increased volumes during, like a bad flu season. And we’re able to do it with the beds that we have existing here in the city every day.”
Fans can expect to see medical tents on site at both Fan Fest and GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. It is a partnership between the Missouri Disaster Assistance Team, Medical Reserve Corps, the Kansas City, Missouri, Fire Department, and the KU Health System.
Missouri Disaster Medical Assistance will also be set up by the bus mall, as leaders anticipate 40 percent of fans will come and go through that corridor.
With the World Cup falling on the hottest days of summer, heat is a top concern. In addition, Beaver says physicians are reading up on the unique challenges our visitors might bring.
“What are potential things that we may not be used to seeing here in the United States that they may be used to seeing over there, and how do we be prepared for that?” Beaver said. “Could be anything from region-specific illnesses — things like flu season that may differ in the southern hemisphere compared to the northern hemisphere.”
KSHB 41 also asked him if insurance would be a problem for non-American visitors.
“We know that some portion of these visitors will have some kind of travel insurance and are gonna work through those needs. Now in the United States, because of our federal laws, if someone is having an emergency, they will get care regardless of their ability to pay,” Beaver said.
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