Colorado woman says she was told she couldn’t get a vital kidney transplant unless she gets the vaccine

• Leilani Lytali suffers from stage 5 kidney failure.

• She said she was told she couldn’t get a kidney transplant because she wasn’t vaccinated against COVID-19.

• UCHealth has recently implemented the vaccination policy to protect the health of its patients.

• Visit the Insider home page for more stories.

A woman with stage five kidney failure has been told she could not receive a vital kidney transplant unless she gets the COVID-19 vaccine, CBS Denver reported.

Colorado’s health system, UCHealth, sent Leilani Lutali a letter on September 28 explaining that she and her donor, Jaimee Fougner, had 30 days to begin the vaccination process and that if they refused the injections, they would be removed from the list of kidney transplants.

“The University of Colorado Hospital transplant team determined that it was necessary to put you inactive on the waiting list,” the letter reads. “You will be inactivated on the non-compliance list by not receiving the COVID vaccine. You will have 30 days to be the vaccination series. If your decision is to decline the COVID vaccination, you will be removed from the kidney transplant list. “

The letter added that Lutali would be able to return to the transplant list once she was fully vaccinated.

Colorado State Representative Tim Geitner, a Republican, tweeted a photo of Lutali’s letter on Tuesday, calling the move “disgusting.”

Lutali told CBS Denver: “At the end of August, they confirmed that there was no COVID vaccine needed at that time… Fast-forward to September 28. That’s when I ‘ve discovered. “

The two women are not vaccinated. Lutali told CBS Denver that she had not been vaccinated, saying there were too many unknowns given her illness, while Fougner cited religious reasons.

“I said I would sign a medical waiver. I still have to sign a waiver for the transplant itself, freeing them from anything that could go wrong,” Lutali said, according to CBS Denver. “It’s surgery, it’s invasive. I’m signing a waiver for my life. I don’t know why I can’t sign a waiver for the COVID vaccine.”

The story continues

Lutani and Fougner are now trying to find a hospital in Colorado that will perform the transplant even though they are not both vaccinated, but without success so far, CBS Denver reported.

In a statement to Insider, UCHealth said it could not share or confirm any information about specific patients due to federal patient privacy laws. It recently implemented a new policy that requires almost all of its transplant recipients and organ donors to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before surgery.

“For transplant patients who contract COVID-19, the death rate ranges from around 20% to over 30%. This shows the extreme risk COVID-19 poses to transplant recipients after their surgeries,” UCHealth told Insider.

A spokesperson for UCHealth told the Washington Post that other transplant centers in the United States are moving towards similar policies. UCHealth did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

More than 100,000 people are currently on the transplant waiting list, and only a fraction of those seeking a kidney received one last year, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.

It is estimated that 17 people die each day while waiting for an organ, according to the American Transplant Foundation.

Read the original article on Insider