This family photo shows DJ Ferguson initially receiving treatment at the Milford, Mass., Regional Medical Center. Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is defending itself after Ferguson’s family announced he was denied a new heart for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
File photo Tracey Ferguson / via AP
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File photo Tracey Ferguson / via AP
This family photo shows DJ Ferguson initially receiving treatment at the Milford, Mass., Regional Medical Center. Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is defending itself after Ferguson’s family announced he was denied a new heart for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
File photo Tracey Ferguson / via AP
MENDON, Mass. – A Boston hospital is defending itself after a man’s family claims he was denied a new heart for refusing to vaccinate against COVID-19, say most transplant programs Transplants across the country impose similar requirements to improve a patient’s chances of survival.
DJ Ferguson’s family said in a crowdfunding call this week that officials at Brigham and Women’s Hospital had told the 31-year-old father of two he was ineligible to participate. performed the procedure because he had not been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“We are really in a corner. This is an extremely sensitive time,” the family said in the fundraising call, which has raised tens of thousands of dollars. “This is not just a political issue. People need to have choices!”
DJ’s mother, Tracey Ferguson, insists that her son is not against vaccinations, noting that he has had other vaccinations in the past. But the trained nurse said on Wednesday that he had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation – an irregular and often fast heartbeat – and that he was concerned about the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Tracey Ferguson said in a brief interview at her home in Mendon, about 48 kilometers southwest of Boston: “DJ is an informed patient. “He wants to be assured by the doctors that his condition will not get worse or cause death with this COVID vaccine.”
Women’s Hospital and Brigham declined to comment on the DJ Ferguson case, citing patient privacy laws. But it does point to a response they posted on their website in which they said the COVID-19 vaccine is among the vaccines required by most US transplant programs. , including flu and hepatitis B vaccines.
The hospital says research has shown organ transplant recipients have a higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than non-transplant patients, and that its policies are consistent with recommendations from the American Transplantation Society. States and other medical institutions.
Patients must also meet other health and lifestyle criteria to receive donated organs, and it is unknown whether DJ Ferguson would.
Brigham & Womens Hospital also emphasizes that no patient has been placed on an organ waiting list who does not meet those criteria, and rejects the notion that a transplant candidate could be considered ” first on the list” for organs – the Ferguson family affirms in their fundraising post. .
“There are more than 100,000 candidates on the transplant waiting list and there is a shortage of available organs – about half of those on the waiting list will not receive an organ within five years,” the hospital said.
Hospitals in other states have faced similar criticism for refusing transplants to patients who were not vaccinated against COVID-19.
In Colorado last year, a woman with end-stage kidney disease said she had been denied a transplant by the hospital because she had not been vaccinated. Leilani Lutali, a Catholic, said she opposes vaccination because of the role fetal cell lines play in the development of some vaccines.
Donor organs are scarce, so transplant centers only put patients on waiting lists that they consider most likely to survive with a new organ.
“The donor heart is a precious and scarce gift,” said Dr. Howard Eisen, medical director of the advanced heart failure program at Penn State University in Hershey, Pennsylvania. “Our goal is to maintain patient survival and good outcomes after transplantation.”
Anne Paschke, a spokeswoman for the organization, said the Organ Sharing Network, the nonprofit that manages the country’s organ transplant system, doesn’t track how many patients refuse to get the COVID vaccine. -19 was transplanted.
She said patients who are refused an organ transplant still have the right to go elsewhere, although individual hospitals ultimately decide which patients to add to the national waiting list.
According to the online fundraiser, DJ Ferguson was hospitalized at the end of November with a heart condition that caused his lungs to fill with blood and fluid. He was then transferred to Brigham and Women’s, where doctors inserted an emergency heart pump that the family said was only a temporary stoppage.
“It was devastating,” Tracey Ferguson said. “No one wants to see their child go through something like this.”
