By Kathleen Magramo, CNN
A seriously ill six-month-old baby will be placed in a temporary ward of the New Zealand High Court after his parents refused to allow him to undergo life-saving heart surgery with blood from people vaccinated against Covid-19.
Handing down the sentence on Wednesday, Judge Ian Gault ruled that the boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, would remain in the ward of the court until he recovered from surgery.
The court also appointed two doctors as its agents to oversee matters related to the operation and the administration of blood, according to court documents.
The baby has a congenital heart defect and needs urgent open-heart surgery to survive, but the operation was delayed due to his parents’ insistence that only blood from donors who have not been vaccinated against covid-19 be used.
The case has drawn attention to the ramifications of vaccine misinformation two years after global vaccination campaigns.
The baby’s parents believed that there were “spike proteins in the blood of people who had been vaccinated and that these proteins were causing unexpected transfusion-related deaths,” according to the ruling.
The parents had previously demanded that the New Zealand Blood Service accept a donation from a person chosen by the family, but the agency refused, saying it does not distinguish between vaccinated and unvaccinated donors.
The court heard that Dr Kirsten Finucane, chief pediatric cardiac surgeon at Auckland’s Starship Hospital, had told the parents that it was “just not practical to have a directed donor”.
Finucane had consulted with other experts and found that a heart bypass without using blood or blood products would not be an option for the baby’s surgery, the court heard.
With the parents and doctors unable to agree on the baby’s treatment and blood transfusion, the New Zealand Health Service filed an application under the Child Care Act in November, asking the court to appoint to a doctor to assume temporary custody of the baby for your medical care. care only.
Following the court’s ruling, Dr Mike Shepherd, acting director of Auckland’s New Zealand Health Service, said its decisions were “always made with the best interests of the child in mind.”
“We acknowledge the decision made by the court, following our request regarding the baby’s surgery, and recognize that this is a difficult situation for all involved,” Shepherd said in a statement.
CNN reached out to the attorney representing the baby’s parents, but did not receive a response.
New Zealand has relatively high vaccination rates for Covid-19, with about 90% of people aged 12 and over receiving two vaccinations and more than 70% of eligible adults receiving a first booster shot, according to its ministry of health. Health.
The CNN Wire
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CNN’s Alex Stambaugh contributed to this report.
