COLORADO SPRINGS (Colo.) A Colorado woman was faced with a tough decision. She had to choose between her religious beliefs and her medical needs when her hospital refused to approve her kidney transplant procedure.
Leilani Lutali was a Christian who had been raised to believe and she went along with her faith.
Lutali, 56 years old, stated that she was not able to consent to being vaccinated despite having stage 5 kidney disease, which puts her at high risk of death.
She said that I am a Christian and cannot support abortion of babies.
Dan Weaver, a spokesperson for UCHealth, stated that transplant recipients must be vaccinated as recipients have a significant risk of contracting COVID-19 and could also end up in hospital or dying. He said that COVID-19 could be passed to recipients by unvaccinated donors, even if they are negative for the disease at first.
He said that studies have shown that transplant patients with COVID-19 may have a higher mortality rate than 20%."
This type of policy is not very common.
The American Hospital Association, which is comprised of nearly 5,000 hospitals and health care networks in the United States said that it does not have any data on the matter. It said that many transplant programs insist on patients being vaccinated against COVID-19 due to the weakening of their immune systems.
Any type of surgery can stress the immune system, making them susceptible to COVID-19. However, organ transplant recipients are more vulnerable because they must take powerful drugs to suppress their immune system. This is to prevent their body rejecting the new organ. Nancy Foster, AHAs vice-president for quality and patient safety, stated in a statement.
She also said that patients who wait until after surgery to receive their vaccine are less likely to have the desired immune reaction, given that they are on anti-rejection medication.
Continue the story
According to news reports, transplant centers in Washington, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, and Alabama have policies that require recipients to be vaccinated.
The Cleveland Clinic has recently made it mandatory that all transplant recipients receive COVID-19 vaccines, according to a statement.
Some health care systems strongly recommend or encourage vaccination for transplants. Sentara Healthcare and Mayo Clinic are two of the largest in the country. University of Alabama Birminghams School of Medicine transplant program recommends that living donors get a vaccine but does not require it to be used for the donation process.
Before an organ transplant, the best time to receive a COVID-19 vaccination is before. Patients should receive their second dose of vaccines as soon as possible, if time permits, so your body can respond to the vaccine. Dr. Deepali Kumar is the president-elect of the American Society of Transplantation and an infectious disease physician.
The COVID-19 vaccines are not opposed by many major religious groups. The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has provoked heated debates due to the fact that cell lines derived directly from fetal tissue played an important role in the research and development for various vaccines and medications.
Roman Catholic leaders in New Orleans, St. Louis and elsewhere went so far as calling Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 shot morally corrupt.
The Vaticans doctrine office also stated that Catholics can receive COVID-19 vaccines based on research using cells derived from aborted foetuses. Pope Francis has stated that it would be suicide to not get the shot and has been fully vaccinated using the Pfizer formula.
Dr. Kumar stated that ethical considerations must consider both the individual and the societal perspective.
She said that it is really about what's best for the patient and society at large. We have better outcomes if more people get vaccinated.
Lutali, a tech company recruiter, said that her hospital was so determined to save her from COVID-19, they were willing to allow her death by preventing her transplant surgery.
Lutali, who doesn't belong to any religious denomination, stated that she doesn't live in fear of death because of her belief about the afterlife. She is currently looking for another hospital in Texas or Florida where she can get a transplant.
She said that she hopes that there will be something that I can live with and that it will be something that I am able to choose from.
___
Nieberg and Slevin reported out of Denver.
