Two years ago the Euthanasia Law was approved and the balance of these first 24 months of a regulation that defends the right to a dignified death “is very positive,” says Cristina Vallés, president of the Right to Die with Dignity in Catalonia.
Throughout Spain, 370 people have accessed this right in the last two years and 150 “of these services have been carried out in Catalonia,” Vallés points out. This represents 0.1 mortality. It is clear, therefore, that in this community -seeing these figures- “this was a much-needed law”, adds the president of Dying with Dignity in Catalonia.
The sample of that “success”, stressed by Vallés, is also evident with the number of processes approved. The first year there were 60; the second, 91.
And another piece of information that would point to the seriousness of the entire process and that “opponents of this law would have to write down”: Half of the requests made in Catalonia in the last two years have been rejected. If Cristina Vallés stands out for something, it is her “seriousness and professionalism when responding to these requests”. The average age of the petitioners is 60 years.
Euthanasia is only approved, they emphasize from Dying with Dignity in Catalonia, when a court establishes that the situation of the person requesting it is irreversible. Or to put it another way, “in severe chronic illnesses with no cure solution or when chronic and serious disabling suffering is diagnosed”, affirms Cristina Vallés. If these requirements are not met – what is known as a euthanasia context – even if someone asks for help to die, that request is rejected.
Dying with Dignity in Catalonia has called a press conference today to take stock. And once the figures were provided, the act has been used to make new requests such as the permanent training of health system professionals so that they respond, with knowledge of the facts, to the doubts or requests that may come to them from their patients.
Cristina Vallés advocates, on the other hand, for the implementation of more information campaigns for the citizen on the document of advance directives. This route allows any person to decide, when they still do not have health problems, to be euthanized if the day comes when they can no longer decide and their disease is incurable.
But the same document, Vallés emphasizes, is also equally valid in the case of those people who do not want an assisted death, even if their condition is irreversible. More democratic, impossible.
Now that last will has to be corroborated by a notary or three witnesses, who cannot be relatives. What is requested from Dying with Dignity in Catalonia is that this procedure required of the person leaves written if they want euthanasia or not, a health professional can also complete it. Cristina Vallés believes that this third way “would make things much easier and faster”.
The Euthanasia law seems, however, to advance at two speeds in Spain. While in Catalonia, Navarra and the Basque Country requests have been increasing in the last two years, in other communities such as Extremadura, Murcia or Galicia assisted deaths have had an incidence (0.01) ten times less than in the first territories.
These two years of application of the law and the result of the experience show that although the norm seemed to have a complex regulation at the beginning, with many doubts, it has been shown, at least in Catalonia, “that it can be applied satisfactorily”.
But this, acknowledges Vallés, “would not have been possible without the efforts of the Department of Health, which provided the means to create the Guarantee and Evaluation Commission of Catalonia from the outset and to implement the program (PRAM) essential to carry out this work ”.
One of the keys to the response in Catalonia to this law would be the role played by “what we call the referent”. He is a professional trained by the Department of Health and associations and organizations involved in this process who “advises other health workers when they are immersed in one of these processes.”
And it is that a very important premise for these professionals is to have a very clear conscience (the number of objectors in Catalonia is very low) when they help someone to die. They have to know that this decision is endorsed by a court, which has already ruled that this is, for that person, the best way out.
