As measles spread in west Texas, the state's 'lackluster investment' in rural health care systems is exposed

Measles is a highly contagious disease
caused by a virus. (Adobe Stock photo)

As the number of diagnosed cases of measles continues to climb, the outbreak in rural west Texas has exposed a health care system that is unprepared to handle even a smaller-scale contagion, reports Pooja Salhotra of The Texas Tribune. "Aging infrastructure, a dearth of primary care providers and long distances between testing sites and laboratories plague much of rural Texas, where the measles outbreak has concentrated."

A few years back, rural Texas was ravaged by Covid infections. Like Covid, the recent measles outbreak is "revealing how a lack of public health resources leaves rural communities vulnerable," Salhotra explains. "What’s left are local leaders forced to scrape together the few tools they have to respond to an emergency, contending with years of lackluster investment from the state and federal level to proactively prevent emerging public health threats."

A lack of hospitals, physicians and dilapidated facilities are just some of rural Texas' health care woes. "Some 64 Texas counties don’t have a hospital, and 25 lack primary care physicians," Salhotra reports. "Swaths of Texas have scant resources for public awareness campaigns. And they lack sufficient medical staff with expertise to provide the one-on-one education needed to encourage vaccination and regular visits to the doctor."

To slow the spread of measles, "rural health care teams have cordoned off spaces to conduct measles testing," Salhotra writes. They've "used social media to blast residents with information about vaccination efficacy and schlepped throat swabs across counties to ship them to a state lab in Austin — the only public state facility that was conducting measles testing until the Texas Tech University Bioterrorism Response Laboratory, part of a national network of CDC-funded labs, began measles testing" recently.

The primary goal of public health is prevention; however, "it’s emergencies that spur the most action, particularly in rural communities," Salhotra explains. "It was only after a school-aged child died from measles that state and federal support intensified."

Currently, Texas "spends less on public health per person than the vast majority of other states, according to the State Health Access Data Assistance Center, whose analysis shows Texas spent $17 per person on public health in 2023. A decade earlier, the spend was $19," Salhotra reports. "The low levels of state funding particularly hurt rural communities that have higher rates of uninsured Texans and more senior citizens with greater health needs."