Read the article it's only elective surgery for patients who are not in ER bleeding to death and in a modern hospital that has all the latest blood conservation gadgets.
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Cost of Jehovah’s Witnesses refusing blood could treat 25,000 in Africa! BMJ 1999;318:873 ( 27 March )Letters
Costs incurred by one severely ill Jehovah’s Witness could run one unit in Africa for one year EDITOR Minerva reports that a Jehovah’s Witness survived emergency surgery for a leaking abdominal aneurysm despite havinga postoperative haemoglobin concentration of only 30 g/l; he spent14 weeks in hospital.1Those of us who work in rural Africacan only wonder how much it cost in the face of claims of rationingand cost cutting in the NHS. Such a stay must easily have costa six figuresum.
Here in Uganda for £250 000 a year we can treat 25 000 outpatients and 7000 inpatients, conduct over 1000 deliveries, andperform 1500 operations. We run a community health programme for500 000 people. The costs incurred by this one patient might runour unit for a whole year. Will the time come when a religiousgroup will be charged the costs of keeping its members alive?Ethically one may feel that one should do everything, whateverthe cost; at the end of the financial year, however, electivesurgery that could be life improving has to becancelled.
The choice is easy here in Uganda. When a child who has severe anaemia from malaria with hookworm infestation and undernutritioncomes in the choice is simple: he or she has a transfusion or dies.Nicholas Wooding , Medical superintendent.
Kiwoko Hospital, PO Box 149, Luweero, Uganda
Minerva. BMJ 1998; 317: 690 . (5 September.) http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/318/7187/873/a Link is still hot