A mother has been stopped from taking her sick child home from hospital to administer  herbal medicine, it has been revealed.

The child is suffering from a life-threatening kidney disease that requires modern medicine to cure it.

The incident, which happened last week, is the latest in a number of cases where parents or guardians have refused hospital treatment on the basis of religious grounds and choices for supposedly alternative herbal cure.

This case and others were highlighted by the Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, during a panel discussion on Wednesday at the University of the South Pacific on the constitutional provisions of the right to life.

The Solicitor-General’s Office had to step in numerous times after parents and guardians of patients refused to give consent for medical procedures to be administered on their children, he said.

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said that last week the SG’s Office had to acquire a court order to stop a mother from taking her child home from the hospital and use herbal medicine to cure the child.

He said there were people who preferred the use of herbal medicine as opposed to the medicine and antibiotics from the hospital.

“To contextualise what I said we had a case last week in the evening where one doctor from CWM rang up that there is a child whose kidneys do not actually take in protein, so protein is seeping from the kidneys and the child is bloating up but the mother is actually wanting to take the boy away and give herbal medicine at home,” the A-G said.

“But we think that the boy will die unless he is given the medicine from the hospital so the SG’s Office went and got a court order around 7 or 8 in the evening to stop the mother from taking the child away from the hospital because we think the child would die.”

Another example he used in terms of the use of herbal medicine was women who suffered from ovarian cancer.

“They are treating themselves with herbal medicine because that is what they have been told as opposed to going to the hospital so whether it is the breach of the right of life or death I cannot tell you that but I can tell you what the current position is.”

Another case where the SG’s office went to court after hours to seek a court order involved the issue of blood transfusion. The procedure was refused by the parents on religious grounds.

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