According to a story, a North Carolina man in need of a life-saving kidney transplant was forced to turn down more than 100 potential donors due to a hospital policy requiring him to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before undergoing the procedure.
Chad Carswell, a Burke County resident, said he’s on dialysis three times a week and has gone to Winston-Atrium Salem’s Health Wake Forest Baptist Hospital in the hopes of receiving a kidney transplant.
Local companies held fundraisers for Carswell’s operation, and more than 100 people offered to donate a kidney, according to Carswell, a double amputee who has undergone several major heart surgeries.
He claimed, however, that the hospital informed him that he and anyone else who wished to donate a kidney would need to be vaccinated before the procedure.
Despite pleadings from his physicians and nurses, Carswell, who is unvaccinated, refuses to act.
Carswell feels that the vaccine should be a personal choice and that no one should be forced to acquire it.
The policy, according to Atrium Health, is in place to safeguard transplant patients who are immunocompromised and are at high risk of serious sickness from COVID-19.