Alberta woman denied transplant over vaccine status, dies

Sheila Annette Lewis, the Alberta woman who was denied an organ transplant because she refused to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, has died.

In recent months, Lewis had been crowdsourcing funding to travel to the United States to get an organ transplant, but she died before that happened.

She was 58.

In 2018, Lewis was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung disease, and was placed on the Alberta transplant wait list.

In 2021, Lewis was told she would also need the COVID-19 vaccine to receive the transplant. Given the high risks of death following a transplant, and the immunosuppressed condition of transplant patients, the COVID-19 vaccine was considered crucial. She refused, and sued Alberta Health Services.

Lewis lost her court challenges in Alberta’s lower court and appellate court. The Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the case.

After losing in the courts, Lewis turned her attention to raising funds to get an organ transplant in the United States. Her page had received $124,776 as of Friday.