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UCHealth, a major Colorado-based hospital network, denies organ transplants to future organ recipients and living donors unless they are vaccinated against COVID-19.
The policy gained attention this week after a Colorado Springs woman saw her place on a list of “inactivated” kidney transplants, with the threat of being removed from the list entirely if she does not sue. COVID vaccination within 30 days.
The woman, Leilani Lutali, told KOAA News she had reservations about the shot. Her living donor, Jaimee Fougner, says she opposes on religious grounds.
UCHealth says its policy protects the lives of everyone involved. The network cited studies showing that unvaccinated transplant recipients who contract COVID-19 are much more likely to die from the disease than the general population.
Organ recipients must take anti-rejection drugs that suppress their immune system, making them much more vulnerable to infections. Between 20% and 30% of unvaccinated transplant recipients who contract COVID-19 have died, the hospital said, compared with a death rate of 1.6% for everyone else.
Colorado State Representative Tim Geitner (right) shared a social media letter Lutali received from the University of Colorado Hospital Transplant Center informing him of the decision on Tuesday :
UCHealth defended politics in a report Wednesday, noting that transplant recipients must meet a number of other requirements in addition to COVID vaccination, all of which exist “to ensure patients have the best chance of recovery and good results.”
Future organ recipients should also be vaccinated against other viruses, for example, and should avoid alcohol, quit smoking, and demonstrate an ability to take long-term anti-rejection drugs.
If a patient is unwilling or unable to take these steps, doctors may advise against the operation. Given the extremely limited availability of organs suitable for transplantation, according to the argument, they should be allocated to patients for whom the procedure is most likely to be successful.
Is it ethically justifiable?
Dr Olivia Kates, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in infectious diseases in transplant patients and studies the ethics of vaccination, says yes.
Transplant programs have a responsibility to protect organ recipients, and vaccination is a safe, easy and effective way to do so, Kates told HuffPost in an email. This obligation extends to living donors, health workers and other patients at the transplant center.
“Vaccination mandates are not really about punishing non-vaccination, but promoting vaccination and ensuring that unvaccinated people are not made even more vulnerable to COVID-19 through transplantation and immunosuppression,” he said. Kates said.
“I think the term mandate itself is interesting,” she continued. “The mandate refers not only to a rule or a requirement, but also to a vocation or a duty. I believe that we all have a mandate – a vocation – to get vaccinated on our own and to promote vaccination among others, for the good of our communities. “
Kates noted that transplant patients with COVID-19 can potentially be a source of emerging variants of concern, making vaccinations within the group all the more important.
UCHealth spokesperson Dan Weaver told HuffPost other transplant centers have similar policies and many are expanding them to include COVID vaccines. The hospital network includes 12 full-service acute care hospitals and more than 150 clinics across Colorado, southern Wyoming and western Nebraska.
Lutali told 9News that she is now looking for an out-of-state hospital that would be ready to perform the operation.
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