Last Saturday, a doctor from a Ghent hospital was arrested after he committed euthanasia on an elderly patient. On Monday, he was released under strict conditions. This is reported by the public prosecutor of East Flanders. The hospital immediately suspended the man for an indefinite period.
The euthanasia, performed at Friday, would be illegal, because it did not comply with all conditions laid down by law. It is about the conditions of ‘consulting another doctor about the serious and incurable nature of the condition and informing him of the reasons for this consultation’ or ‘letting the patient write down the wish for euthanasia himself and sign’.
It is not clear what exactly went wrong in this case and how this could have happened. The prosecutor’s office is investigating the case. The qualification in the current state of the investigation concerns poisoning (Article 397 of the Criminal Code), according to the public prosecutor’s office. That is the same qualification for which the three doctors had to answer for themselves in the euthanasia process in 2020 in Ghent.
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