A hospital in the USA has removed a patient without a Covid-19 vaccine from the heart transplant waiting list.
The 31-year-old patient, DJ Ferguson, needed an emergency heart transplant.
Ferguson’s father, David, said Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston had removed his son from the list.
David stated that Covid vaccines “contrary to his son’s principles, he does not believe in vaccines”.
The hospital management stated that they had to follow the rules.
Making a statement to the BBC, the hospital emphasized that the Covid-19 vaccine of patients waiting for transplantation and paying attention to their lifestyle significantly increases the likelihood of a successful operation and their survival after the operation.
The statements in the hospital’s statement do not exclude the possibility that other factors besides the vaccine may have played a role in this decision.
Stating that most of the people on the waiting list, which includes 100 thousand people, will not have the opportunity for organ transplantation for the next five years, the hospital management did not provide more information on the subject, citing patient privacy.
On November 26, 2021, Ferguson was hospitalized for an inherited heart condition, according to the GoFundMe page that opened up to raise funds for Ferguson.
People who opened the page wrote that Ferguson was worried about heart muscle inflammation, a rare side effect of vaccines.
On the other hand, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends getting the Covid-19 vaccine to those who have an organ transplant and everyone around them.
Speaking to CBS, NYU Grossman School of Medicine Head of Medical Ethics Dr. Arthur Caplan said that even an ordinary cold can be fatal because of the suppression of the immune system of people with organ transplants.
Dr. “Organs are very difficult to find. That’s why we don’t transplant organs to people who are less likely to survive, but to people who have been vaccinated and are more likely to survive after surgery,” Caplan said.
Earlier this month, a woman in the US state of Minnesota filed a lawsuit against the hospital, which was considering removing her unvaccinated husband, who had been on a ventilator for two months.
In the USA, where 63 percent of the population is double-vaccinated, the rate of triple-vaccination is 40 percent.