Adamson S. Muula
Editor-in-Chief, Malawi Medical Journal
Professor and Head, Department of Community and Environmental Health, School of Global and Public Health, Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, Malawi
Email address: amuula@kuhes.ac.mw
In September 2026, the Governing Body of the Jehovah’s Witnesses announced in Warwick, New York that receiving red blood cells, white cells, plasma, or platelets from another person’s blood was now permissible and only a matter of personal conscience. In addition, Witnesses were also at liberty to donate blood if it was for the purpose of providing (blood) components to someone else. These are important policy changes. Now is time to move forward.
What are the implications for the policy changes? Firstly, in all situations where a Witness (that is how a Jehovah’s Witness believer is fondly known as) has no personal objection to receive blood components, it will now be just on personal choice of the patient for a blood component transfusion to occur. Parents and guardians to children will also have to deal with only personal choice and not religious edicts on avoidance.
Whole blood transfusions are in any case, rare in many countries. Patients are often given the specific blood components according to their needs. Red cells are given for anemia. Platelets for bleeding or bleeding risk. Plasma for clotting problems. White cell only transfusions are rare; but can be lifesaving in severe neutropaenia (arising from infection or bone marrow failure).
The recent policy change also permits that Witnesses can donate blood; the proviso being that the blood will be separated into components before being transfused. Needless to say, it would have looked absurd if the church had only permitted receipt of blood components while refusing her adherents from being blood (component) donors. The Malawi Blood Transfusion Services now has a new group from which it can collect blood.
In this last paragraph, I wish to mourn a loss. As a teacher for medical ethics and social aspects of healthcare, one of the vignettes and attendant examination question was on JWs prohibition of blood donation and receipt. The recent policy change is like a rug pulled under my feet! One favourite questions is now gone, hopefully forever. There will no longer be an examination question which required a medical student to navigate a situation where a Witness was medically in need of blood transfusion.
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this editorial are personal; they do not represent views for the publishers of the Malawi Medical Journal.