An expert has explained why a baby whose parents are refusing to give him blood from vaccinated donors can't just be given blood from those who are unvaccinated.
The baby in question needs heart surgery and a blood transfusion, but his parents want the blood to come from donors who have not had the COVID-19 vaccine.
Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand has gone to court after parents refused vaccinated blood for their four-month-old baby's life-saving surgery.
The New Zealand Blood Service currently doesn't divide between vaccinated or unvaccinated, and said there's no evidence of risk in using vaccinated blood.
Health NZ is seeking guardianship of the baby and appeared in court on Wednesday, along with their parents, for a preliminary hearing. The hearing was met by a gathering of around 100 protesters outside the High Court in Auckland.
Auckland University's Immunisation Advisory Centre medical director Professor Nikki Turner told The Project why this situation can't be solved by taking the blood - for example, from some of those who were protesting - to get the baby the surgery he needs.
"We need to offer this baby safe, quality blood product. We can't just give the baby any blood off the street," Prof Turner told The Project.
She said the point of the NZ blood services is to ensure people get safe blood, which requires matching the blood type and screening to make sure there aren't any real threats in the blood such as viruses like HIV and Hepatitis.
Prof Turner said doing a one-off emergency screening to get blood from someone who is unvaccinated to the baby would open up a whole other can of worms.
"Even if we could do that, then what if people think there is a problem and that's why we did it, so a hundred people ask us to do that and then 200 people, and we did it for no logical reason. We would be sort of opening up a problem that wasn't a problem," Prof Turner said.
"Even if it was possible, from which I understand from our health services it's not that simple, we'd be creating a bigger problem."
She would like to see people sit down and work through where their fears and anxieties came from to work through them and build trust.
"From the bottom of our hearts, the New Zealand health services are trying to offer the best quality service we can offer this baby," Prof Turner said.
"Health services are here to help our people, not hinder them."
