Jehovah’s Witnesses have announced an adjustment to their long-standing blood policy, allowing individual members to decide according to their personal conscience whether to accept or donate the four main components of blood.
The change was announced by the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses on September 18, 2026, in a statement released by the organisation’s World Headquarters in Warwick, New York.
Under the revised position, members can personally decide whether to accept red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma or platelets from another person’s blood during medical or surgical care.
The organisation also said each Witness can decide whether to donate blood specifically so that its components or fractions can be used in the treatment of another person.
However, the group stressed that its position against whole-blood transfusions has not changed.
“The long-standing refusal of whole-blood transfusions on religious grounds, a core teaching based on the command to ‘abstain from blood’ (Acts 15:20), is unchanged.”
The organisation explained that the decision regarding the four primary blood components is now considered a matter of individual conscience because it says the Bible does not directly comment on their medical use. It added that congregations should not interfere in such personal decisions or judge members over them.
The announcement has generated strong reactions online, with some social media users questioning the change and others criticising the group’s previous position on blood.
@DimmsXO: Africans should wake up! We tie ourselves with unnecessary doctrines made by man. We don’t ask questions nor can we discern.
@tomide_akinsola: For you those who are still slaving on doctrine that was created by ordinary men like you, hope your brain can open now
@Offor_mbang: Has the Bible they claimed to be their authority for that barbaric practice over the years, changed? This is a confirmation that all this denominations are following man and not God
@shootatsight15: After killing their members with their ignorance and lies. Na only God go punish dem
@allmorrows: “Yeah, God was against it but now he doesn’t mind”
@sabimarkets: Aunty Esther and many others just died for nothing
@Dominionchikach: After dem don kpai people. With there nonsense religious doctrine
@wereyadugbo: Those that died then died for nothing I guess… If you like let religion kpayin you, you just die for nothing
@FidelGreat51602: Just look at how religion put millions of Africa in bondage what a disgrace
@iam_eltiga: One of their members died at my hospital because of this. Indoctrination ehhh
@ifortune04: If Christians are true followers of Jesus Christ they would had been unified in a single doctrine and the gospel of Christ…
@mercythe16th: At the end, it is never about God but about their own doctrines and ignorance of the word. And I am talking about all churches.
@Unknown_Lordd: What of the people who have died?
@Blissfulbliss23: Just wow,they should just stick to their anyhow law na ,when millions of lives had gone down Good for them though
@Ofuje_b: After my childhood friend died? You people must be mad
@Emma_ade6: After a lot of people of d!Ed because of such doctrine, Judgement day go hot sha.
@BallerG__: Their conscience will judge them.
