Jehovah's Witnesses in Africa: Documented Deaths, Medical Harm, and the Human Cost of Religious Doctrine

Ehovah's Witnesses are known worldwide for their distinctive doctrine concerning blood. For decades, members were instructed to refuse blood transfusions. The doctrine was not limited to ordinary medical preferences. It could apply even when physicians considered transfusion necessary to save a person's life. The consequences have been documented in African hospitals, courtrooms and medical literature. The evidence includes deaths. It includes children whose parents refused transfusion. It includes pregnant women facing life-threatening haemorrhage. It includes patients with severe anaemia. It includes court proceedings in which judges or public authorities intervened because religious objections placed a child's life at risk. And it includes cases in which the courts had to decide whether a patient's religious refusal should prevail over medical judgement. The issue therefore deserves examination as a public-health, medical-ethics and child-protection question.