The family of a young cancer sufferer claim she is being denied a vital lung transplant due to her decision not to receive four Covid vaccines.
The parents of Dazelle Peters, allege that Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital is denying their 16-year-old daughter a double lung transplant because she won’t take the vaccines.
Dazelle’s father, Josh Peters, who hasn’t had the Covid shot himself, claims a surgeon told his daughter that if she didn’t get the jabs and then caught the virus she would be a ‘major threat to everyone (in the hospital) who has done the right thing.
‘The way he made us feel was that they didn’t want to give her the lung transplant,’ Mr Peters, 45, told Daily Mail Australia.
The hospital said that Dazelle hasn’t been placed on a waiting list for various reasons, with her lack of Covid vaccination being one of them.
A hospital spokesperson confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that their ‘policies and guidelines wouldn’t support transplantation’ of an unvaccinated person.
‘Vaccination status against various infections is a critical part of this assessment in order to ensure optimal prospects of survival post-transplant,’ a hospital spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.
‘Accordingly, 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 leukaemia
Mr Peters waits beside Dazelle’s bedside as the teen battles a post bone marrow disease that is attacking her lungs and other organs
However, the spokesperson stressed that each case was assessed ‘individually’.
‘There are other complexities that need to be assessed before an informed decision can be made about the appropriateness and practicality of transplantation for Dazelle,’ the spokesperson said.
‘We have requested further follow-up from her and her doctors in order to make an informed assessment.’
Dazelle is given an oxygen mask in hospital with her lungs now only operating at around 20 per cent of capacity
Dazelle was diagnosed with leukaemia two and half years ago and desperately needs new lungs because her body is rejecting donor cells from a bone marrow transplant.
Mr Peters insists his family has done everything to make Dazelle a suitable candidate for a transplant, except get the four Covid shots which would take nine months to administer.
‘Vaccines are only a small part of the process to get a lung transplant,’ Mr Peters said.
‘They are a Catholic hospital. They have all taken an oath to help people and take care of people and do the right thing by people.
‘Who deems that she doesn’t deserve a chance over anybody else?’
‘This is no game. This child is f***ing sick man.’
Mr Peters said during a May 9 consultation at St Vincent’s 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, and described how she was found collapsed in her bedroom over the weekend and has been in and out of Newcastle’s John Hunter Hospital.
‘Her lungs are all scarred up, they are buggered they are only running at about 20 per cent,’ Mr Peters said.
‘She couldn’t even start to perform the lung function the other day because her lungs are just too distraught to hold the oxygen.’
Although none of his family has 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 that because we are the parents, we make the decisions, but we are not talking about a five-year-old child here.
‘We can’t force her, and the hospital know they can’t force her.
‘Some of her family members in the Philippines are quite sick from these jabs.’
Mr Peters said doctors have told them Dazelle always ‘gets the worst of the worst of side effects’, and this has strengthened her resolve not to get the shots.
Mr Peters said that before an allegedly brutal session with a specialist at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital Dazelle never complained about her condition
Mr Peters said that for the first time he had to carry Dazelle up the stairs of her Newcastle home as breathing was exhausting her
‘That’s another reason she personally, not us, doesn’t want to get the shots. Her heart’s not good, her kidney’s not good, her liver’s not good, she’s a mess,’ he said.
Mr Peters rejects the label he and his family are ‘anti-vaxxers’.
‘Our children have had every single vaccination that they are meant to have,’ he said.
‘We even got the flu shots right up until Covid started hitting.’
But Mr Peters said there was something about the Covid vaccines that perturbed him.
‘I am not going to rush into it,’ he said.
Before Dazelle was diagnosed with cancer in December 2020, Mr Peters said she was ‘a very, very healthy energetic child’.
Mr Peters holds Dazelle’s hand with the teen slipping into a coma following her bone marrow transplant in May 2021
‘She was right into her sport, everybody loved her lots of friends. Before she got sick she had barely taken a Panadol in her life.
‘Just a down-to-earth kid. We never had any problems, everyone loved her.’
Dazelle was lucky to pull through her May 2021 bone marrow transplant.
‘After the operation she became unresponsive and slipped into a coma,’ Mr Peters said.
Mr Peters said Dazelle ‘thinks she doesn’t have long left’.
‘Why would you deny her a lung transplant when she has fought so hard to get where she is?
‘Dazelle has been on her deathbed and been given the gift of a second chance. She’s a special child.’
According to the TGA, Covid-19 vaccines may cause some side effects.
The most frequently reported include injection-site reactions (such as a sore arm) and more general symptoms, like headache, muscle pain, fever and chills.
Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart and is named as a possible, but very rare, side effect of Covid-19 vaccinations.
Myocarditis is reported in around 1-2 in every 100,000 people who receive Pfizer, around 2 in every 100,000 of those who receive Moderna and 3-4 in every 100,000 people who receive Novavax.
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