Uncontained: Short Creek, measles and the long shadow of Warren Jeffs
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Inside a health clinic at the base of a craggy mountain on the Arizona-Utah border, May Keate’s phones won’t stop ringing. If the landline isn’t interrupting her, she’s silencing her cell phone to continue a conversation. It’s been like this for the past two months at Hometown Wellness, where Keate is the billing manager. The clinic’s two physicians and staffers have been kept busy responding to a growing, border-spanning outbreak of measles, one of the most infectious diseases known to man.
Hometown Wellness sits in the scenic southern Utah town of Hildale, which hugs the border across from the northern Arizona hamlet of Colorado City. But few who live there make such a distinction. All of this is Short Creek — or “the crick,” if you live there. Fewer than 5,000 people do, many of them treating the twin municipalities as a single entity. The Arizona side even follows Utah’s time zone.
The border line doesn’t mean much to Creekers, as residents call themselves. It certainly doesn’t mean anything to measles. Since early August, Short Creek has been besieged by measles cases. As of Oct. 15, there have been 73 positive measles cases in Arizona’s Mohave County, almost all of them traced to Colorado City. Another 41 cases have been traced to Hildale on the Utah side, spreading into St. George and Cedar City, both roughly an hour away. Combined with four cases in Arizona’s Navajo County — which, unlike the Colorado City’s numbers, never grew — the Short Creek outbreak is now the biggest Arizona has seen since 1991.
It’s been keeping Short Creek’s health workers busy and Keate’s phones buzzing. Her clinic has seen patients of all ages — from children and teenagers to full-grown men — who are in the throes of the disease. First comes the head cold, then a runny nose and fever that can spike to 106 degrees. White spots appear in the mouth and a red rash covers the face, traveling down the rest of the body. Measles weakens the immune system, and Keate says “tons” of patients have contracted pneumonia, forcing them to seek treatment at bigger facilities at least a half-hour away. Luckily, no one has died from measles, at least yet.
Read more https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/arizona-town-measles-long-shadow-of-warren-jeffs-40611894/
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