Cuauhtemoc, Mexico – In a ripping white Nissan, nurse Sandra Aguirre and she vaccination team Pass the apple orchards and corn fields that extend to the horizon of the desert. AGUIRRE does door to door with a cooler measles vaccines. In one of the largest Mennonite communities in Latin America, she knows that many will refuse to be vaccinated or even open their doors. But some will ask questions, and a handful could even agree to take photos on site.
“We are here every day,” said Aguirre, stopping to call an empty farm, checking the residents. “To trust the mennonites – because they are reserved and closed – you have to meet them where they are, show a friendly face.”
Aguirre's work is part of the efforts of the health authorities across the country to contain Mexico's largest epidemic for decadesAs the cases go up not only here but in the United States and Canada. In Mexico, cases were concentrated in the Mennonite community – Long skeptical of vaccines and Memory towards the authorities – In the state of the northern border of Chihuahua.
The officials say that the results of their campaign alongside the Mennonite leaders have been mixed – they cite tens of thousands of new vaccinations in Chihuahua, but infections have gone bankrupt and spread before the community of native and other populations.
Federal officials documented 922 cases and a death in Chihuahua. Officials, health workers and local leaders say that the figures are probably underestimated, and disinformation on vaccines and endemic distrust of authorities are their greatest obstacles.
Pressed against the margins of the small town north of Cuauhtemoc, the colony mennonite here extends over 40 kilometers (25 miles). With 23,000 residents, it is one of the main economic engines of Cuauhtemoc, but it is an isolated place where families keep themselves for them. Some have turned to social and anti-vaccine media websites for research. Others use little technology but visit the family in the United States, where they also intend to disinformation – which then spread through word of mouth.
Chihuahua is a particularly disturbing place, according to officials – as a border state, the risk that the preventable disease continues to spread internationally and affects the most vulnerable is high.
“We have a massive flow of people,” said Alexis Hernández, a Cuauhtemoc health official. “It makes things much more complicated.”
Mexico considered measles eliminated in 1998. But its virus vaccination rate was approximately 76% in 2023, according to the World Health Organization – a drop compared to previous years and well below 95% tariffs according to experts to prevent epidemics.
Mexico's current epidemic began in March. The officials traced it to an unaccompanied 8 -year -old mennonite boy who visited parents in Seminole, Texas – at the center of the American epidemic.
The cases quickly spread to the Mennonite community of 46,000 men from Chihuahua via schools and churches, according to religious and health leaders. From there, they said, he spread to workers of orchards and cheese plants.
Gloria Elizabeth Vega, a raramuri native woman and a single mother, fell ill in March. Because it is vaccinated, measles did not come to her until it broke out in hives. Her supervisor at Cheese Factory – who also caught measles – told her that she had to take 10 days off and moored her 40% salary for the week, said Vega.
It is rare that vaccinated people get measles, but those responsible say that this can represent up to 10% of cases here, although they are softer.
Vega fell back at the back of his two -room house, hoping that her daughter and mother – also vaccinated – would not fall ill. She wants people to think of others when they are considering vaccination.
“They say,” Well, I'm enough to go well, “she said. “But they don't think about this other person next to them, or wonder if that person has enough.”
Vaccination is not required in Mexico. Schools can request vaccination files, said the spokesperson for the Federal Health Department, Carlos Mateos, but they cannot refuse anyone access to education.
In Chihuahua, some schools have started handing the parents for copies of vaccination cards and encouragement cards, said Rodolfo Cortés, spokesperson for the Ministry of State Health.
We do not know how much in the Mennonite community have obtained the vaccine – which is certain, with risks lower than those of the complications of measles.
Gabriella Villegas, responsible for vaccination in a clinic dealing with mennonites with measles, estimated 70% of community members are not vaccinated. Other health authorities have estimated the vaccination rate of around 50%.
The Mennonites who spoke to the Associated Press – most of them under the cover of anonymity, fearing the backlash – have repeatedly quoted the disinformation of the vaccines. A man said an American health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.which has a long record for promoting anti-vaccine views and called Vaccination A personal choice is a hero.
“I do not accept vaccines; it's as simple as that. Because this is where freedom of expression comes into play,” said the man, Jacob Goertzen. “If we cannot make its own decisions, we do not live in a democracy.”
Hernández, Cuauhtemoc health director, said external influences affect community vaccination opinions.
“The Mennonite population has a lot of access to social media and family members in the United States and Canada, where there are many myths that have taken root and many other” anti-vaccine “groups that we have in Mexico,” he said.
During the vaccination campaign of the nurse Aguirre, a man simply said that people here “prefer to heal himself in their own way”. A mother has described to fall ill of the measles as a “privilege” and spoke of putting it in anthnu of 5 and 7 years not vaccinated so that everyone can fall ill and recover – a risky tactic that doctors have long denounced.
Mexico's only death against measles was a 31-year-old mennonite man in the colony who suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure, underlying who often complicates diseases.
Most residents of Aboriginal communities and others quickly accepted vaccination, said officials, but in the mennonite zone teams, teams must make more vigorous awareness-door-to-door visits, follow-up calls and conversations and participation of local leaders.
In the Cuauhtemoc regulations, they are leaders like Jacob Dyck Penner. As president of the colony, he and other leaders closed school for two weeks to slow down infections, have made an effort to show residents that they work with health authorities and encourage vaccination.
Managers reflect information on health in German low, the mother tongue of most of the community. Penner and others help the vaccination teams, making sure that families know how to access health services.
“We had to find in this way, with doctors, so as not to put pressure on people or inspire mistrust, so that they can make their time and make their own decision to accept (be vaccinated),” said Penner.
Doctors report more people visiting clinics, looking for measles vaccines and other diseases. However, said Penner, there is a band of people will always reject vaccinations.
Health managers like Hernández say they are in particular for vulnerable populations, including Aboriginal groups, many of whom have fewer resources to cope.
Vega, the single mother who obtained measles, said that her work at Cheese Factory was once a blessing, providing health insurance and regular remuneration.
But the forced leave and the mofeed salary left it in shock. She said that she lived the pay check for the pay check and wonders how she will pay the bills – her daughter's school supplies, lunches, tennis shoes.
“I have a daughter to keep afloat,” she said. “It is not as if I had the opportunity to wait and pay things, for food.”
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Associated Presso Video Journalist MartÃn Silva Rey contributed to this Cuauhtemoc report in Mexico.
