An I-Team analysis of Ohio school vaccination data found that the schools with the highest rates of unvaccinated children tend to be in the Amish community, especially in Holmes County.
But some schools in southwest Ohio are not far behind, and one area school district has a higher exemption rate than Holmes schools.
Holmes County, located between Columbus and Cleveland, received a wake-up call last year when measles tore through the Amish community after the disease was picked up by an Amish missionary in the Philippines. The ensuing epidemic was historic, infecting 382 people.
Holmes County health director D.J. McFadden said the Amish turned out in droves for vaccines once they saw the viciousness of the disease that nearly killed a young girl, had three pregnant mothers in fear of losing their babies and afflicted hundreds with severe pain.
“Many people said, ‘First I thought I would die. Then I wanted to die, then I got better,’ ” he said.
“When they saw measles, measles was such a very serious disease they did this mental math and said measles are much worse than the vaccine could be, and measles is here,” he said. “These diseases are only a plane ride away.”
There is no Amish doctrine opposed to vaccination that McFadden is aware of. Most of what he heard were concerns about autism, sterility and other concerns familiar to people in non-Amish communities. What was unique to the Amish, he said, was their quick resolve to get vaccinated for the benefit of the community.
“So when the message was that folks in the Amish community had the potential to spread the disease to people outside the Amish community, that’s not a legacy they want to hold, so they took steps to stop the spread of the disease,” he said.
If they didn’t value the community above the individual, he said, “It would have been much more catastrophic.”
While this is one lesson to learn from Holmes County, another is that low vaccination rates allowed the disease to spread to more Amish people in Ohio last year than have been affected nationwide any year since 2001.
“I think people need to be aware that whenever there are concentrations of folks who aren’t vaccinated, everyone is at risk,” McFadden said.
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