Measles outbreak in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania affecting pregnant women and midwives, Digi Mart USA News (Lancaster County, Pennsylvania): When Roberta Devers, a midwife in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, did a prenatal check on an expectant mom this week, the woman, a member of the Amish community in her third trimester, had been sick with measles. Devers said she has cared for dozens of pregnant women infected with the virus since measles began spreading rapidly in the county in April.
Devers, 63, estimates she has delivered nearly 2,000 babies in her 38-year career. She has a degree in maternal and fetal health, but she works as an unlicensed, traditional midwife in Pennsylvania, independent of hospital systems and without physician oversight.
State law bars traditional midwives from practicing medicine. Devers said she questioned immunizations as a young mother and never vaccinated her son.
“There was as much information against vaccines as there was about the efficacy of vaccines,” she said.
Her experiences during the county’s outbreak have changed her mindset. “Numbers and books became people,” she said.
“It was humanized by watching what was happening to the mothers I was serving.”
In mid-October, the Pennsylvania Health Department alerted doctors about a rise in measles infections in pregnant women and newborns. As of Wednesday, state health officials had confirmed measles in 97 pregnant women.
There is no data, however, on how many miscarriages have occurred because of measles. Devers said one of her young mothers went into labor at 17 weeks, losing her baby.
“There was no doubt in my mind that it was the measles,” she said.
Midwives like Devers are the closest many pregnant women in the community come to mainstream medicine. Medical or vaccination clinics are not always easy to reach in rural areas, especially for Amish families who rely on horses and buggies for transportation.
Devers can advise isolation to limit the spread of the highly contagious virus and explain risks such as preterm birth and miscarriage. She cannot administer measles vaccines.
“I have to say no. Midwives requested directly to the Health Department that we be allowed to carry this vaccine, and we were told no.”
The Pennsylvania Health Department said in a statement that it “does not have the authority under current state law to allow traditional midwives to administer vaccines, nor does DOH regulate the practice of medicine in the Commonwealth.” Any change would need to come from the Legislature. Certified, licensed nurse midwives under state law can administer the measles vaccine, and the Health Department said it has given nearly 11,000 measles-mumps-rubella vaccinations this year.
A survey of Amish families in Lancaster County found that nearly half had home births in 2022. Less than a third, 30%, said they vaccinated their children in 2022, compared with 52% in 2014. An NBC News/Stanford University data investigation found that 75% of U.S. counties and jurisdictions with measles-mumps-rubella vaccination data fell below the herd immunity threshold at the start of the 2025-26 school year, up from 67% in 2024-25. Before the pandemic, Lancaster County’s MMR immunization rate was 95.5%, the level needed to prevent an outbreak.
Last school year, just 87.6% of kindergartners in the county had received measles shots, NBC News data found.
As of Wednesday, 1,505 cases had been reported in Pennsylvania, more than a third of them in Lancaster County. Pregnant women cannot receive the measles vaccine because it contains a weakened but live virus.
Most children who catch measles recover without problems, but some develop complications and must be hospitalized. Dr.
Evan Shirey, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Penn State Health Golisano Children’s Hospital in Hershey, described children needing oxygen and respiratory support, and some developing brain inflammation called encephalitis. At least two babies in the state have died.
Nearly all states have similar laws barring traditional midwives from giving vaccines without a doctor’s backing. New York recently declared a disaster emergency allowing some unlicensed practitioners, including some midwives, to give vaccines.
Pennsylvania health officials recently invited midwives to an upcoming measles education webinar. There are early signs the spread may be slowing in Pennsylvania, with 73 new cases reported this past week, but the outbreak is not over.
November marks the start of the traditional Amish wedding season, and the pregnant Amish woman Devers visited said she has recovered and plans to attend a wedding scheduled for Thursday.
