How Mennonite women are building bridges between public health and community amid measles outbreak

Low German-speaking Mennonites face language, trust barriers amid Ontario’s largest measles outbreak in decades, as health workers push to bridge the gap.

Catalina Friesen got a call one night in February from one of her clients, a Low German-speaking mother in Aylmer, Ont. Her daughter had a rash that covered her body. The five-year-old had a fever and was coughing out of control.

“I said, ‘just take her to emerge, especially if she’s not eating or drinking,’” says Friesen, a personal support worker and liaison for a health clinic in St. Thomas, Ont., that caters to the Low German-speaking Mennonite community.

But her client said she already went to the hospital, and that they turned her away.

Friesen called the hospital and found out her client was told to go back to her car — standard practice for a measles patient while they prepare a negative-pressure room.

“But because they couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying, they thought they told them to go home,” says Friesen, of the misunderstanding.

Friesen helps more than 700 Low German-speaking Mennonites navigate the health-care system in southwestern Ontario. She says she has guided at least 200 people through the current measles outbreak, translating test results and public health measures.

Every Thursday, she drives a bus outfitted as a walk-in-clinic to a church parking lot in Aylmer, Ont., that serves Low German-speaking Mennonites in the surrounding rural areas, where the community has been based for approximately 75 years.

Many of these families are from Mexico and have been migrating to the region for seasonal agricultural work since the 1950s, in some cases staying due to better economic opportunities.