A charity using zakat to treat patients

A question about a charity taking zakat to treat patients, buy medicines and equipment and fund health projects, in which Jordan's General Iftaa Department answered that zakat may not be spent on buying medicines, equipment or health projects, but may cover poor Muslims' treatment costs through their agency, while the state may spend it in whatever way best benefits the poor. ¹

The questioner asked whether a charity may take zakat and use it to treat patients, pay patients regularly, sponsor a patient, buy medicines and medical equipment, cover laboratory costs and fund sustainable health projects. ¹

The Department answered that the recipients of zakat are fixed in the verse on alms in Surat al-Tawba, and that zakat may not be paid to buy medicines and medical equipment or to cover laboratory costs and health projects; but spending it on poor Muslims and their treatment costs, not on general administrative or operating expenses, is unobjectionable. ¹ It said a hospital or centre may obtain an agency from the poor under which it receives the money on their behalf and then spends it on them, because zakat in principle must be put into the poor person's ownership; the exception is a government body, since the ruler may spend zakat on the poor in the way he judges most beneficial. ¹ It cited the jurists' view that the ruler may buy the poor person a property to draw income from, quoting al-Zarkashi as reported in Mughni al-Muhtaj, the gloss of al-Jamal on Sharh al-Manhaj that the ruler acts for the poor in receiving zakat, and Ibn Hajar al-Haytami in Tuhfat al-Muhtaj that he may bind the poor person not to dispose of what was bought, for the public interest. ¹ It noted that the Jordanian Iftaa Council decided in its resolution no. 99 that zakat may be used to help poor Muslim cancer patients, and closed with the hadith of Mu'adh that alms are taken from the Muslims' rich and returned to their poor. ¹

Jordan's General Iftaa Department published this fatwa on aliftaa.jo as no. 3986, dated 14 July 2025. ¹ The museum records this text as a historical document attributed to the body or scholar that issued it; it issues no ruling of its own.