VANCOUVER—Flanders, Belgium, has surpassed the Netherlands in its rate of euthanasia. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows 4.6 per cent of all people whose lives ended in Flanders in 2013 died by euthanasia.
In contrast, 2.8 per cent of deaths in the Netherlands in 2010 were caused that way.
“This finding indicates that, after 11 years of experience, euthanasia is increasingly considered as a valid option at the end of life in Belgium,” the report, dated March 17, states.
“I did the math,” said local palliative care physician Margaret Cottle during a seminar on euthanasia at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre 10 days later.
If 4.6 per cent of all deaths in Canada were by euthanasia, “it would be 11,184” deaths, “tied with the fourth leading cause of death.”
Cottle found another statistic in that study troubling: 1.7 per cent of deaths in Flanders in 2013 were “hastened without explicit request from patient.”
If that were true in Canada, 4,115 people would have died by euthanasia without asking for it, she said. It would still rank within the top 10 causes of death.
The Flanders study also reveals that this rate of euthanasia deaths without request has remained more or less constant in the 21st century, hovering between 1.5 per cent (2001) and 1.8 per cent (2007).
An increasing number of doctors are following through with requests for death, according to the report. In 2007, 56.3 per cent of requests for euthanasia or assisted suicide were granted; that number rose to 76.8 per cent in 2013.
Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium and the Netherlands since 2002. Belgium took it a step further when it became the first country to extend the practice to children last year.
