The Standard Group Plc is a multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper print
operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The Standard Group is recognized as a
leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key influence in matters of national and international interest.
He is terminally ill. He has less than six months to live and is in excruciating pain, which he can no longer endure. Available drugs are doing little to ease the pain. He is suffering and just counting his last days by the minute.
Two doctors have already certified that he is mentally sound and can make the decision to end his own life. Would you help him die?
The heated global debate on assisted dying has now been imported to Africa after Desmond Tutu, one of the world’s most eminent religious leaders, backed the right of the terminally ill to end their lives.
The 82-year-old retired South African Anglican archbishop broke ranks with majority view of the Church when he recently made the extraordinary intervention, arguing that laws that prevent people from being helped to end their lives are an affront to those affected and their families.
Already, the United Kingdom has started the process of legalising what is essentially assisted suicide, after more voices in support of the controversial development came to the fore.
In an attempt to persuade British law makers, leading doctors even called for terminally ill patients who are suffering “unendurably” to be able to end their lives with doctors’ help.
Extreme rejection
Though it is largely unacceptable in many parts of the world, the debate, which has been on for decades, is now being tolerated more than ever, as sentiments move from extreme rejection to ‘should be considered under special circumstances’.
Kenyan law is against suicide. It also prohibits anyone from intentionally, knowingly and directly acting to cause the death of another person. But is the country ready for the emotive debate on assisted dying?
“The essence of medicine is to preserve life and we will be biting too much if we took it upon ourselves to end it. The decision is too big for all of us. We are better off leaving nature to take its course,” said Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) Secretary General Sultani Matendechero in an interview.
He said it was better to keep someone alive because there was no going back once he was dead.
“A drug can be found after he is dead and you can’t go back to the grave to get him cured. He is better off alive,” he added.
Samuel Karanja, a seminarian at Human Life International Kenya, a pro-life association, argues that the term ‘assisted dying’ has just been coined to softly bring back euthanasia, commonly referred to as mercy killing.
“These people are just playing with words but we don’t want to admit that we are killers, taking the law into our own hands. We have a right to life and the work of doctors is to help their patients live,” says Karanja.
He added that there are two types of euthanasia. The first is where someone decides that they want to be killed through a written will should they be in a vegetative state, and the second is indirect - after doctors declare there is nothing more they can do or the next of kin asks for the patient to be killed because they will be the ones paying the bills.
“It is called euthanasia but all patients deserve a chance. We have seen strange things happening in hospitals. There are those patients you give up on but their health miraculously changes for the best,” says Dr Matendechero.
The trade unionist argues that it is not right for either the patient or his doctor to be allowed to end life and that such a law will be misused.
“How do you make the decision for someone else? And how can the patient be allowed to decide when to live or die? That is more like suicide and from whatever position you look at it, it is unethical. We have cases of patients who just give up on medication, especially the elderly, and opt to go back home to die. Such a law would only make such cases worse,” he says.
But he holds a different view when it comes to switching off life-support machines.
“For financial reasons, it is sometimes untenable for a family to keep a patient on life support and in such cases, it is different when a doctor switches them off.”
Also, the law clearly prohibits assisted dying under any circumstances. According to the Kenyan law, a person convicted of murder shall be sentenced to death. In addition, the law says that anyone who helps another kill himself is liable to imprisonment for life.
Philip Nitschke, an Australian humanist, remains the loudest global voice of the voluntary assisted dying movement after he campaigned successfully to have a legal euthanasia law passed in Australia’s Northern Territory and helped four people end their lives before the law was overturned by the Government of Australia.
The euthanasia campaigner helped a cancer patient to become the first person in the world to end his life under a legal euthanasia regime.
Supporters argue that they want it to be okay to stop being helpless when faced with patients “who suffer unendurable pain during the terminal days or weeks of a difficult illness despite the best that palliative care can offer”.
The strongest opponent of this debate is the Church. Already, over 25 different religions and denominations around the world have registered their opposition to this debate, which is gaining traction all over the world.
life is precious
Speaking at the General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life early this year, Pope Francis argued that a society is truly open to life when it recognises that life is precious even in the elderly population, in the disabled, and even in those who are gravely ill or in the process of dying.
“Health is certainly an important value, yet it does not determine a person’s value. Furthermore, health is not in and of itself a guarantee of happiness — this is verified even in the event of unstable health. The fullness toward which all human life is oriented is not in contradiction with any condition of illness and suffering,” said the Pope.
“Hence, the lack of health or the fact of one’s disability are never valid reasons for exclusion or, and what is worse, the elimination of persons. The gravest deprivation experienced by the aged is not the weakening of one’s physical body, nor the disability that may result from this. Rather, it is the abandonment, exclusion and deprivation of love,” added Pope Francis.
Other religions that have publicly opposed the move include Guru Nanak, Al-Khoei Foundation, the Methodist Church, the Pentecostal Church, the New Testament Church of God, the Sikh community, Free Churches Group, The Salvation Army, Assemblies of God and some Muslim leaders.
The latest instance that reignited this debate in Africa were the days leading to the death of Nelson Mandela, who was kept alive through numerous painful stays in hospital before his death at 95.
The controversial UK law applies only to people who are terminally ill and whose doctors believe they have less than six months to live.
Two doctors must certify that the patient is mentally capable of taking the decision to end their life, and that they are of settled mind. It also allows a cooling off period.
The patient must also be able to administer the medication themselves.
The law also legitimises the supply of the lethal dose of medication by a health professional, in a form that the patient can ingest.
But those against it question how doctors will assess the willingness of their patients to die given that it will also give doctors a new role - facilitating death - other than the traditional practice of care and preservation of life.
join