2024-01-02 07:01:00
Euthanasia is taking great steps towards its regularization in Colombia. For this reason, the Ministry of Health has published on its website – available for comments – a draft resolution that regulates this medical practice, which the Constitutional Court decriminalized in 1997 and made it a fundamental right.
Also read: Congress approved in the first debate a project that seeks to regulate euthanasia in Colombia
Even with its Catholic and conservative tradition and customs, Colombia is the leading country in South America (it is the only one where it is legal) regarding the right to die with dignity. Better known as euthanasia: ending the life of a person with a disease, through medical intervention.
But it was only until 2015 that it began to be practiced and the health sector to regularize its practice. Even so, so much progress has been made since then that, in July 2021, the same Court said that having a terminal illness was no longer a requirement to access this procedure.
Now, with the draft resolution, the Ministry of Health wants to lay the foundations to regulate the right “to die with dignity through euthanasia and the adaptation of therapeutic efforts.” This 32-page document – which is still under construction – sets out clear rules on requesting this practice, the requirements to do so, which people would be excluded and what the process would be like so that minors under 18 years of age can request it.
How to request euthanasia?
The project stipulates that the request for this practice “must be autonomous, voluntary, informed, unequivocal and persistent,” which can “be expressed directly by the patient through a verbal or written statement, and indirectly through of an Advance Directive Document.”
However, euthanasia, like everything, will have limits and requirements. In that sense, article 15 of the draft resolution will have three conditions: the presence of an extreme health condition, referring to intractable and irremediable suffering secondary to that health condition and being able to express the request directly.
The doctor who receives the request would be in charge of checking that the established requirements are met, recording it in the medical history and activating (within the first 24 hours) the Scientific-Interdisciplinary Committee for the Right to Die with Dignity.
Who will be on the Committee?
The file posted on the Ministry of Health website stipulates that there are three professionals who will make up the Scientific-Interdisciplinary Committees: a doctor who is a specialist in the main diagnosis suffered by the patient requesting euthanasia, a lawyer and a psychiatrist or psychologist. clinical, which will be designated by private or public health care institutions.
Could minors request it?
The document dedicates an entire chapter to setting the rules for the care and processing of euthanasia requests by minors under 18 years of age. Thus, it establishes that the doctor must take into account “the cognitive development and maturity of the minor, as well as the context in which she finds herself.”
Then, article 33 states that the attendance to request a medically assisted death of someone who has parental authority over a child or adolescent will be governed “by the best interests of the minor.” Consequently, for minors between 6 and 14 years old, it is mandatory that whoever has parental authority be present; On the contrary, for applications from adolescents between 14 and 17 years old, it is not mandatory to have their responsible adult.
Meanwhile, people between 6 and 12 years old may submit a request for euthanasia if they “achieve exceptional neurocognitive and psychological development that allows them to make a free, voluntary, informed and unequivocal decision in the medical field and their concept of death reaches the expected level.” for a 12-year-old boy or girl.”
In these cases the same requirements apply to access euthanasia, that a committee authorizes the procedure and that the applicant reconfirms its decision.
However, there is a population that the resolution under construction calls “subjects of exclusion from the request for the euthanasia procedure”, which includes newborns and neonates; early childhood; minors between 6 and 12 years old who do not meet the psychological and cognitive conditions; as well as children and adolescents “with inability to make decisions due to a mental disorder, neurological or neurocognitive alteration.”
In all these rules, the health promoting entities (EPS) play a coordinating role to communicate with the Scientific-Interdisciplinary Committee that studies the case of their member, to guarantee the availability of providers who have the necessary services to respond to the requests. and to have suitable and sufficient professionals in its service provider network.
From the communications office of the Ministry of Health they told EL COLOMBIANO that the resolution was available for comments until December 31. After this, all observations sent by interested parties will be analyzed so that they are incorporated into a final resolution signed by Minister Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo.
According to figures from the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Laboratory (DescLab), between 2015 and 2022, 322 euthanasias were carried out in the country.
Whats Next? Euthanasia in figures over the years in Colombia
The official figures – that is, those reported in the health system and in compliance with established standards – indicate that from 2015 to 2022 the number of euthanasias that were performed in the country multiplied by 24, as they went from four to 99 in that period of time.
Meanwhile, in 2016 seven cases were reported, in 2017 there were 17, in 2018 the figure rose to 24 euthanasias and in 2019 it rose to 43 medically assisted deaths. In 2020 there was a reduction of 20.9%, dropping to 34 cases; but in 2021 it recovered its rate of increase and 95 procedures were recorded. In total, between 2015 and 2022, 322 people agreed to euthanasia.
Of that number of procedures, 287 correspond to terminal illnesses, 33 were performed on people with serious and incurable illnesses and two cases involved bodily injuries.
In the last year for which DescLab has records (2022), there were the same number of men and women who requested a medically assisted death, with 49 for each sex and one case of a transgender person.
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