End of Life Choices Jersey wants politicians and planners to include an end-of-life facility in the new hospital, to combine palliative care with an assisted-dying provision.
Islander Michael Talibard, deputy coordinator of End of Life Choices Jersey – which is leading the campaign to introduce pro-assisted-dying legislation in the Island – said: ‘An end-of-life choices department in the new hospital would be a wonderful service for the people of the Island and very much needed.
‘You are building something brand new, state of the art, so why not look to the future and to the way society is going on the issue of assisted death?
‘Today we talk about things we never spoke about when I was a child and a young man. Society has opened up and liberalised, and in other unrelated areas such as same-sex marriage, we’ve seen huge shifts in public opinion and legislation.
‘So I think it very unlikely that we won’t, in the next ten years or so, be bringing in assisted-dying legislation. So the Island’s plans for medical provision should look at that and plan for it.’
He said the benefit of having an end-of-life choices department in the new hospital would be the provision of a ‘combined approach’ to helping terminally ill patients.
He added: ‘It would mean the Island could offer patients both palliative care and, at an appropriate point, assisted dying, combining the strengths of charitable and public provision.
‘This would mean that the individual patient would be handed on in a caring and loving way from one expert to another, without the horrors of having to organise an assisted death for themselves.’
The law in the British Isles does not currently permit assisted dying, and Mr Talibard said that this meant people who were terminally ill or suffering severe, enduring pain had to spend thousands of pounds to travel to countries which did have facilities for assisted suicide.
‘Those who want to have an assisted death who can afford it are having to go to Switzerland. But most people can’t afford that and even if they can, they have to be well enough to travel.
‘And if you’re well enough to travel, it may be suggested by your doctors that you are not ill enough to go, so it’s very tricky.’
Mr Talibard said that failure to plan for an end-of-life choices department in the new hospital would be a ‘bad oversight’.
Some people would argue that a hospital is a place you go to get well, not to die, but Mr Talibard added: ‘Of course people go to hospital to be made better, but some people die in hospitals or are sent home to die. The notion that a hospital doesn’t have to do without deaths is absurd.’
With such a facility – and possible future legislation – in place, Mr Talibard insisted that Jersey could become a ‘world leader in the field’.
‘That is by offering those who are nearing the end of their life all the relevant options within one caring and integrated system,’ he added.
