Victoria

Victorian VAD Act 2017

To apply for VAD, the following criteria must be met:

Applicants must be:

• Victorian residents ( have lived in Victoria for at least 12 months)
• aged over 18
• capable of making decisions in relation to voluntary assisted dying

The disease must be:

• diagnosed by two doctors
• advanced, progressive and will cause death
• terminal
• causing intolerable pain (suffering in a way that “cannot be relieved in a manner the person deems tolerable”)
• expected to cause death within weeks or months, but not longer than six months or 12 months if the illness is a neurodegenerative condition like motor neurone disease

The legislation includes 68 “safeguards”, including new criminal offences to protect vulnerable people from abuse and coercion and a special board to review all cases. The laws also have safeguards to prevent terminally ill people being pressured into a decision:

• Anyone who is the beneficiary of the person’s will cannot be among the two witnesses required to sign the application.
• Authorities will not reveal the exact make-up of the drug prescribed under the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act. It will be dispensed by pharmacists at the Alfred Hospital, which was asked by the State Government to provide the service.

If these requirements are met, the patient will be able to obtain a lethal drug within 10 days of asking to die, following a three-step request process involving two independent medical assessments. The patient must administer the drug themselves, but a doctor could deliver the lethal dose in rare cases (when the patient is physically unable to administer the drug by himself).