The Courier-Journal’s investigative series on the vaccine-preventable disease hepatitis A revealed how state health leaders failed to stop a hepatitis A epidemic that ultimately developed into the largest and most deadly in the nation. Reporters found that Kentucky’s infectious disease chief, a top state public health nurse, were ringing the alarm when the disease started to spread outside of Louisville into impoverished rural Kentucky, which was challenged by thinly staffed county health departments and rampant drug use that fueled the disease.
While the infectious disease chief argued for a powerful, $10 million state response and an emergency declaration, the new public health commissioner approved only $3 million and declined to declare an emergency. Kentucky also failed to employ some of the successful strategies of other states facing outbreaks. In the months that followed, the outbreak metastasized into the nation’s largest and deadliest, sickening nearly 5,000 people and killing 61 – and spreading to nearby states. The story revealed how failing to take swift, decisive action to stem an outbreak – and failing to adequately fund public health – can have disastrous, deadly consequences.