The family of a young cancer patient claims she is being denied a vital lung transplant due to her decision not to receive four Covid vaccines.
Dazelle Peters’ parents claim St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney is denying their 16-year-old daughter a double lung transplant because she doesn’t want to take the vaccines.
Dazelle’s father, Josh Peters, who did not get the Covid injection himself, claims a surgeon told his daughter that if she didn’t get the shots and then contracted the virus, she would be a “major threat to everyone (in the hospital) being’ who did the right thing.
“The way he made us feel was that they didn’t want to give her a lung transplant,” Peters, 45, told the Daily Mail Australia.
The hospital said Dazelle has not been placed on a waiting list for several reasons, including her lack of Covid vaccination.
A spokesperson for the hospital confirmed that their “policies and guidelines would not support the transplantation of an unvaccinated person.”
“Vaccination status against various infections is a critical part of this assessment to ensure optimal survival rates after transplantation,” a hospital spokesperson said.
‘That is why there are national guidelines and recommendations regarding vaccination before and after organ transplants.’
Josh Peters with his daughter Dazelle before the 16-year-old was diagnosed with leukemia
Mr. Peters waits by Dazelle’s bedside as the teenager battles a bone marrow disease that affects her lungs and other organs
However, the spokesperson emphasizes that each case is assessed ‘individually’.
“There are other complexities that need to be assessed before an informed decision can be made about the appropriateness and feasibility of transplantation for Dazelle,” the spokesperson said.
“We have requested further follow-up from her and her doctors to make an informed assessment.”
Dazelle is put on an oxygen mask at the hospital and her lungs are now only working at about 20 percent of their capacity
Dazelle was diagnosed with leukemia two and a half years ago and is in dire need of new lungs because her body is rejecting donor cells from a bone marrow transplant.
Mr Peters insists his family did everything they could to make Dazelle a suitable candidate for a transplant, other than getting the four Covid vaccinations that would take nine months to administer.
“Vaccines are just a small part of the process of getting a lung transplant,” Peters said.
It’s a Catholic hospital. They all took an oath to help people and take care of people and do the right thing through people.
“Who thinks she doesn’t deserve a chance over anyone else?”
‘This is not a game. This kid is a fucking sick man.’
Mr Peters said at a May 9 consultation at St Vincent’s that the surgeon said the hospital would give the lungs to a better candidate because Dazelle is a ‘complex case’.
He said his daughter’s condition is deteriorating, describing how she was found collapsed in her bedroom this weekend and has been in and out of Newcastle’s John Hunter Hospital.
“Her lungs are scarred, they’re broken, they’re only running at about 20 percent,” Mr Peters said.
“She couldn’t even start performing lung function recently because her lungs are just too upset to hold the oxygen.”
While none of his family have been vaccinated against Covid, Mr. Peters insists the decision is entirely Dazelle’s.
“Dazelle has been clear she doesn’t want the jabs,” Mr Peters said.
“People think we make the decisions because we’re the parents, but we’re not talking about a five-year-old child here.
“We can’t force her and the hospital knows they can’t force her.
“Some of her relatives in the Philippines have become quite ill from these jabs.”
Mr Peters said doctors have told them Dazelle always gets ‘the worst of the worst side effects’, and this has strengthened her resolve not to have any injections.
Mr Peters said Dazelle never complained about her condition before an allegedly brutal session with a specialist at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital
Mr Peters said he had to carry Dazelle up the steps of her Newcastle home for the first time because breathing exhausted her
“That’s another reason why they personally, not us, don’t want to get the injections. Her heart is not good, her kidney is not good, her liver is not good, she is a mess,” he said.
Mr. Peters rejects the label that he and his family are “anti-vaxxers.”
“Our children have had all the vaccinations they should have,” he said.
“We even got the flu shot until Covid started to hit.”
But Mr Peters said there was something about the Covid vaccines that upset him.
“I’m not rushing into it,” he said.
Before Dazelle was diagnosed with cancer in December 2020, Mr. Peters said she was “a very, very healthy, energetic kid.”
Mr Peters holds Dazelle’s hand as the teen slips into a coma following her bone marrow transplant in May 2021
“She loved her sport, everyone loved her, many friends. Before she got sick, she had barely taken a Panadol in her life.
“Just a sober boy. We never had any problems, everyone loved her.’
Dazelle was lucky enough to get through her May 2021 bone marrow transplant.
“After the operation she became unresponsive and went into a coma,” Mr Peters said.
Peters said Dazelle “thinks she doesn’t have long.”
“Why deny her a lung transplant when she fought so hard to get to where she is today?
‘Dazelle is on her deathbed and has been given a second chance. She’s a special child.’
According to the TGA, Covid-19 vaccines can cause some side effects.
The most commonly reported injection site reactions (such as sore arm) and more general symptoms, such as headache, muscle aches, fever and chills.
Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart and has been cited as a possible, but very rare, side effect of Covid-19 vaccinations.
Myocarditis is reported in about 1-2 out of 100,000 people given Pfizer, about 2 out of 100,000 of those given Moderna, and 3-4 out of 100,000 people given Novavax.