Sheila Annette Lewis was diagnosed with a terminal illness in 2018 and was told she would not survive without an organ transplant. She was placed on an organ waiting list in 2020, but in 2021 she was informed that a COVID-19 vaccine was required to receive the transplant.
With the help of her friends, Lewis has now found a hospital in the U.S. that would not require her to be vaccinated for COVID-19 to be a transplant recipient. The testing is estimated to cost $100,000 and, after Lewis finds a suitable transplant donor, the surgery will cost another estimated $500,000.
Court Cases
Arguing that the transplant policies at the Canadian hospital violated her charter rights, Lewis had previously brought her case to the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench and the Alberta Court of Appeal. But the courts ruled against her, claiming the charter does not cover specific COVID-19 vaccine policies.Lewis then took her case to the Supreme Court of Canada. On June 8, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), which represented Lewis, announced the court had refused to hear her case. Additionally, the court decreed that Lewis needed to pay the costs incurred by Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the transplant doctors in the two trials Lewis lost.
Lewis told the National Citizen’s Inquiry—which examined how the pandemic measures put in place by all levels of government impacted Canadians—that the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear her case meant she was taken off the organ transplant list and would “never get back on.”
Lewis filed a separate legal action against the AHS, unnamed transplant doctors, and an Alberta hospital. Lewis is accusing them of medical malpractice and negligence and will ask the court to reinstate her to the high-priority transplant list immediately.