She’s delivered 2,000 babies. The measles outbreak changed her mind about vaccines.

Résumé détaillé

Traditional midwives like Roberta Devers could be key to increasing vaccination as outbreaks spread in rural communities such as those in Pennsylvania.

This is part of The Vaccine Divide, a data investigation into America’s potential loss of its measles-free status as the deadly virus roars back and childhood vaccine defenses continue to crack and crumble.

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. Lancaster County is largely rural, with sprawling family farms.

“Every single day,” she said, “someone’s calling to ask what they do. They’re pregnant and they’ve gotten it, or their babies have gotten it.”

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 is working as an unlicensed, traditional midwife in Pennsylvania, independent of the 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. “It was difficult to know who to trust and who to believe.”

Her experiences in Lancaster 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.”

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