Rural Hospitals Face Unique RSV, Flu Challenges

Hospital closures over the past few years means fewer beds, at a time when flu and RSV especially are stretching pediatric hospitals to the limit.

Stefeni Pogas says she was terrified after waking up in the middle of the night to find her two-year-old son Dexter struggling to breathe. 

"I called the EMS to meet me at a gas station. We went to the ER and we found that he had adenovirus and RSV. He got up to the point where he was needing 15 liters of oxygen," said Pogas. 

After eight days, Pogas requested her son be transferred to a children’s hospital about three hours away from her home near rural Kingman, Arizona.