Healthcare surround a bed as they turn a patient suffering from coronavirus disease (COVID-19) out of prone position at Humber River Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on April 28, 2021. (Photo by Cole Burston / AFP)
An Alberta woman who was removed from a high-priority organ transplant list for not receiving a COVID-19 vaccine has found a hospital in the United States that is willing to perform the surgery.
Sheila Annette Lewis was diagnosed with a terminal illness in 2018 and was told she would not survive without an organ transplant. She was placed on an organ waiting list in 2020, but in 2021 she was informed that a COVID-19 vaccine was required to receive the transplant.
Lewis had all her childhood vaccinations updated in 2021 but decided not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine because she was concerned about side effects. According to a GiveSendGo fundraising campaign set up to help pay for Lewis’s surgery, she had tested positive for COVID-19 twice and received a COVID antibody test where she was found to have “extremely high” levels of antibodies, however, was still required to take the vaccine in order to receive the transplant in Canada.
With the help of her friends, Lewis has now found a hospital in the U.S. that would not require her to be vaccinated for COVID-19 to be a transplant recipient. The testing is estimated to cost $100,000 and, after Lewis finds a suitable transplant donor, the surgery will cost another estimated $500,000.
Over $35,000 has been raised on the GiveSendGo platform for Lewis’s testing and surgery to date.
Court Cases
Arguing that the transplant policies at the Canadian hospital violated her charter rights, Lewis had previously brought her case to the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench and the Alberta Court of Appeal. But the courts ruled against her, claiming the charter does not cover specific COVID-19 vaccine policies.
Lewis then took her case to the Supreme Court of Canada. On June 8, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), which represented Lewis, announced the court had refused to hear her case. Additionally, the court decreed that Lewis needed to pay the costs incurred by Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the transplant doctors in the two trials Lewis lost.
“Ms. Lewis is deeply disappointed that the Supreme Court of Canada decided not to hear her case,” said Allison Pejovic, legal counsel for Lewis, in a release. “She had hoped that justice would prevail in the courts for herself and other unvaccinated transplant candidates across Canada. Unfortunately, her constitutional challenge has ended today, while the unscientific COVID-19 vaccine mandate persists with no end in sight.”
Lewis told the National Citizen’s Inquiry—which examined how the pandemic measures put in place by all levels of government impacted Canadians—that the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear her case meant she was taken off the organ transplant list and would “never get back on.”
Lewis filed a separate legal action against the AHS, unnamed transplant doctors, and an Alberta hospital. Lewis is accusing them of medical malpractice and negligence and will ask the court to reinstate her to the high-priority transplant list immediately.