KwaZulu-Natal’s health MEC, Nomagugu Simelane, lambasted a religious group a week ago for encouraging its members to abandon life-saving treatment for illnesses such as HIV/Aids in favour of faith-based living.
iKhaya Labafundi, based in KwaMaphumulo, advises its growing membership to reject modern life. Members turn down job opportunities and refuse to be on antiretroviral medication for the treatment of HIV/Aids.
Medical evidence is unambiguous — HIV is not curable, but it can be successfully managed with treatment, and those living with it can lead productive and healthy lives instead of facing what was once a death sentence.
There is no evidence that prayer or any faith-based approach is effective against HIV/Aids. Over the years, people across Africa and other parts of the world have died after abandoning ARVs for faith-based living.
A month ago, the minister of health, Aaron Motsoaledi, was compelled to ask Charlotte Maxeke Hospital to approach the courts to save the life of a critically ill boy.
The 15-year-old is battling a rare metabolic disorder that is affecting his kidneys and liver. He is in desperate need of a transplant, but to have the procedure done, he will need a blood transfusion.
The Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre is willing to provide the life-saving surgery to the boy, but it cannot proceed because his Jehovah’s Witness father is refusing to allow a blood transfusion during the operation.
The implication is that the boy will have to continue to travel from KwaNdebele to Charlotte Maxeke Hospital three times a week for the dialysis treatment lasting four to six hours a session that he has been undergoing for over a year.
Dialysis is a life-sustaining treatment for patients with kidney failure. Its main benefits include reducing the symptoms and extending and improving quality of life. It has many side effects, with common issues including abnormally low blood pressure, muscle cramps, fatigue, itchy skin and the risk of infection. It demands strict management of diet and fluid intake between sessions and can significantly affect daily routine and mental health.
But more than anything, dialysis does not cure kidney failure and is required permanently unless a transplant is successful. Thus, unless the child gets the operation he needs, he is going to have a diminished quality of life while his treatment costs rise exponentially. The money spent on transportation every week and a restricted diet affect his education, which has an effect on his economic outcomes.
Religious freedom is a constitutionally enshrined right that must be protected. But I’m struggling to reconcile this with the decisions that are being made in the name of religion.
To condemn sick people to death and to allow a child to suffer when a blood transfusion would save his life is unthinkable. And it is not the first time this has happened.
In 2018, a Durban paediatrician took the parents of a five-year-old boy who was suffering from sickle cell anaemia to court after the staunch Jehovah’s Witnesses members refused a life-saving blood transfusion for him.
After a judge granted the order for the child to receive treatment, the parents stated that they would oppose the application on religious grounds, even if it meant losing their child. This is unconscionable.
Any religion that chooses suffering and death over human life must be challenged in and outside the courts.
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