Gaines County in West Texas is at the heart of the ongoing measles outbreak. Non-medical vaccine exemption rates there are high.

After a pediatric patient in West Texas died of measles complications, hospital officials are urging the community to take the outbreak seriously, and to educate themselves about the virus and vaccination.

A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, officials there said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious respiratory disease since 2015.