An Ontario aboriginal girl who refused chemotherapy and opted for alternative healing methods to treat her cancer has died.
Makayla Sault’s family says the 12-year-old suffered a stroke on Sunday.
In a statement issued in the Two Row Times, a weekly newspaper covering indigenous issues, Sault’s parents say their daughter died early on Monday.
They say Sault was “on her way to wellness” after the “harsh side effects” of 12 weeks of chemotherapy, but claim the treatment did “irreversible damage to her heart and major organs.”
The hospital which administered chemotherapy to Sault called her death “heart-breaking” and said she was a “remarkable girl.”
Sault’s case was among two recent instances in Ontario where aboriginal families opted for alternative therapy to treat children with cancer.
In the second case, which ended up in court, an Ontario judge ruled in November that doctors could not force the 11-year-old girl to resume chemotherapy to combat cancer.
In that ruling, the judge found the girl’s mother had a right to treat the child with traditional aboriginal medicine instead.
