A hospital in Boston refused to perform a heart transplant on a patient who had not been vaccinated for COVID-19, US television media reported Wednesday, IgbereTV reports.
A spokeswoman for Brigham and Women’s Hospital confirmed in a statement to AFP that vaccination against the coronavirus is “required” for organ transplant recipients there.
The patient’s father, David Ferguson, appeared on news channels CNN and ABC to share the family’s story, saying his 31-year-old son has been to the “edge of death” and “pushed to the limit” waiting for a heart transplant.
The patient, who had been in line for the transplant at the Boston hospital, has refused to receive a Covid vaccine.
“It’s kind of against his basic principles, he doesn’t believe in it,” Ferguson told ABC.
“It’s a policy they are enforcing and so because he won’t get the shot, they took him off the list of a heart transplant,” his father said.
The hospital “requires several CDC-recommended vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine,” Brigham and Women’s said in the statement
