Takeaways from AP's report on how flat funding set stage for Texas measles outbreak, might fuel more

The measles outbreak in West Texas didn’t happen just by chance. The easily preventable disease, declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, ripped through Texas communities in part because health departments were starved of the funding needed to run vaccine programs, officials say. Nationwide, immunization programs have been left brittle by years of stagnant funding by federal, state and local governments. Health departments got an influx of cash to deal with COVID-19, but it wasn’t enough to make up for years of neglect. In Texas and elsewhere, this helped set the stage for the measles outbreak and fueled its spread. And now, new federal funding cuts threaten efforts to curb it .