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.

Texas authorities on Wednesday announced the first measles death in the state's outbreak of the highly contagious disease. The death, of a school-age child, is the first measles death in the U.S. since 2015,