The Faith Tabernacle Congregation church and their church run school were part of a large measles outbreak in Philadelphia, in which the church saw 486 cases of measles and 6 deaths among their members.
And this wasn’t in the 1940s or 50s, before we had a measles vaccine.
This happened in 1991.
There were other measles cases and deaths in the city and nationwide that year. In fact, between 1989 to 1991, there were 55,622 cases and 123 deaths in the United States, a big increase that was blamed on falling immunization rates.
What was different about the Faith Tabernacle Congregation church outbreak was that all of the children were unvaccinated and, as a faith-healing church, they refused medical care even once they got measles.
Health officials eventually had to get a court order to force the parents in the congregation to vaccinate their children.
Ultimately, only nine children from church got vaccinated though.
faith is very important