The man had been asking the hospital to verify his health conditions for more than a year to access the lethal drug.
A 43-year-old quadriplegic who Has the last ten immobilized in bed, is the first patient who has obtained authorization to undergo medically assisted suicide in Italy, after a Constitutional Court ruling established that right in 2019.
“The Ethics Committee (of the public health service) found that the man is within the conditions established by the Council to access assisted suicide, for the first time in Italy ”, announced today the Luca Coscioni Association, which has been fighting for years for the introduction of a law to regulate euthanasia in Italy.
Mario – a fictitious name to keep the identity of the patient hidden – had been requesting for more than a year the hospital in the Marche region (center-east) “to verify his health conditions in order to access, legally in Italy, a lethal drug to put an end to their suffering ”, the term established by the Constitutional ruling.
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“We have won in Italy the right to choose over one’s own life”Filomena Gallo, Mario’s co-defender and secretary of the organization, told EFE that he described it as “cruel” to have done him “Wait 15 months because the Constitutional ruling already has the force of law.”
After the first refusal of the regional service of Marches (ASUR), a mediation award and the final decision of the Ancona Court, in addition to two legal warnings to ASUR, Mario finally obtained the favorable opinion of the Ethics Committee, after a group of specialist doctors confirm that you have the right to legal access to assisted suicide.
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“I feel lighter, I have freed myself from all the tension accumulated in recent years”, said Mario, who “was already ready to go to Switzerland,” according to Gallo, when the Coscioni association came, which has accompanied him throughout the legal journey necessary to achieve his wish.
Now “we will provide, in collaboration with an expert, the details of the methods of self-administration of the drug suitable for Mario, depending on his conditions. The Constitutional Court ruling establishes that the public structure of the National Health Service is only responsible for verifying the modalities before the competent territorial ethics committee, “said the lawyer.
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In Italy life support treatments can be stopped, give palliative care and deep sedation, as provided by the law of the biological testament, “but if Mario had not been able to self-administer the drug, he would have needed direct euthanasia, and that is still considered a crime”He added.
The lawyer recalled that the association has submitted more than 1.2 million signatures – “more than double the necessary” – to call a referendum that allows “repeal this crime” before “The lack of political will.”
“The Italian ruling class is afraid of the freedom of the citizens themselves, instead of thinking about fundamental civil liberties, they prefer not to speak out and maintain prohibitions that do not exist in our Constitution”, He assured.
Public Health “hides behind the absence of a law that defines the procedures” as a result of the “paralysis of Parliament, which three years after the request of the Constitutional Court, is still unable to approve it,” said Mario Cappato, treasurer of the Association.
“The result of this institutional irresponsibility is that people like Mario are forced to endure even a judicial ordeal, in addition to the physical and psychological suffering caused by their condition,” he added. (I)
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