Few people participate in the Jewish Vaccine Education Program in New York – The Forward

(JTA) – Less than 150 women participated in a vaccine education program in Monsey, NY, less than a month after the same hall had been filled with hundreds of men and women for an anti-vaccine symposium.

The women's event in Monsey, a town in Rockland County with a large Orthodox Orthodox population, was organized by a coalition of orthodox Jewish pro-vaccine groups on Monday night, local newspaper News reported.

It's for women that they feel comfortable asking questions, immunization activist Shoshana Bernstein told the newspaper. She also called women the "guardians of health in the family".

Bernstein is the author, along with the Orange County Health Department, of a vaccine information booklet entitled "Tzim Gezint," which means "be healthy" in Yiddish. It has been distributed to the Jewish community of Rockland.

The program allowed women to visit booths and ask questions of doctors and other health professionals.

The event took place less than a month after a symposium with leaders of the anti-vaccination movement, which involved hundreds of haredim. This event brought together a range of stakeholders who challenge the medical consensus and urge families not to vaccinate their children. Among them, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor whose study linking measles vaccines to autism was both discredited and condemned, and appeared via Skype; and pediatrician Lawrence Palevsky.

The Orthodox communities of New York and Rockland County have been at the center of the most severe measles outbreak since 1992. The New York City Department of Health and Hygiene said Thursday that "the world's largest population is at risk. there were 550 confirmed cases of measles in New York 2018 and 29 May. Rockland County officials said 254 cases of measles were reported there on May 28.