Madrid (EFE).- At least 338 people died with medical help in application of the euthanasia law until December 2022, in the first year and a half of application of the law, according to figures provided to EFE from the Ministry of Health.
It is a lower figure than that handled by the Right to Die with Dignity association, which estimates around 370 euthanasias carried out until last December.
On the eve of the law’s second anniversary, this Sunday, June 25, Health sources confirm that 75 euthanasias were carried out in 2021. According to the unconsolidated data available to that department for now, in 2022 263 were carried out.
It is not yet possible to provide a figure for the current year, information that is collected from the data of all the autonomous communities and that is still under development, they explain.
Included in the National Health System
These sources recall that the provision of aid in dying, included in the common portfolio of services of the National Health System two years ago, is publicly financed and is provided in accordance with the procedure and guarantees established by the law approved by Parliament in 2021.
This norm, which received the endorsement of the Constitutional Court last March, establishes the procedure for people with a serious, chronic and disabling condition, or a serious and incurable illness, that cause intolerable physical or mental suffering to request the benefit.
The law, they emphasize from Health, supposes a “legal, systematic, balanced and guaranteeing response to a sustained demand from today’s society such as euthanasia.”