Malawi Wire

Golden butterflies adorn the walls of the Netherland’s only euthanasia expertise center, put up in remembrance of thousands of patients who have chosen to die with dignity over the past two decades.

Situated in a leafy upmarket suburb of The Hague, the Euthanasia Expertise Center is the only one of its kind, giving information, assisting medical doctors and providing euthanasia as end-of-life care, which was legalized in a world first in the Netherlands on April 1, 2002.

Belgium soon followed later that year and Spain last year became the sixth country to adopt euthanasia — the act of intentionally ending a life to relieve a person’s suffering, for instance through a lethal injection given by a doctor.

The number of people seeking euthanasia is growing in the Netherlands, with some 7,666 last year, up by more than 10 percent from the year before, according to official figures.

The vast majority are aged 60 or over, suffering from cancer or other terminal illnesses.

“Twenty years ago, when the law was passed, it was known, but certainly not used as often as today,” said Sonja Kersten, director of the Euthanasia Expertise Center.

The reasons are many: an ageing Dutch population; the fact that euthanasia is no longer a taboo subject and society has opened up to the issue.

“Dying with dignity is a debate that’s growing within Dutch society, which is quite open to the subject,” Kersten said.

‘Existential question’

Euthanasia is only authorized in a few countries around the world.

In Belgium, which will mark two decades of euthanasia in May, some 40 French citizens also benefitted from the practice last year.

The decision to ask for euthanasia as end-of-life care remains a “difficult and existential question,” Kersten said.

“It’s neither a patient’s right, nor a doctor’s duty,” to have euthanasia, she added.

In the Netherlands, euthanasia can only be carried out under strict conditions set down in Dutch law.

Children aged up to 16 need the permission of their parents and guardians, while parents must be involved in the process for children aged 16 and 17. From 18, any Dutch citizen may ask for assisted death.

In all cases, the patient must have “unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement” and must have requested to die in a way that is “voluntary, well considered and with full conviction”.

Other criteria apply as well, like the absence of a reasonable alternative to the patient’s situation.

Doctors, too, cannot be forced to perform euthanasia.

‘Die at home’

The Euthanasia Expertise Centre helps doctors through the process by sharing knowledge and providing guidance. At the same time, the center helps patients whose doctors refuse to help them.

The center, established in 2012, is a foundation but patient care is reimbursed by health insurers.

It first positioned itself as the “Levenseindekliniek,” Dutch for “End-of-life clinic,” offering on-site euthanasia.

But even before the start, it became apparent that most patients preferred to die at home, Kersten said.

Today, the center can call upon a network of about 140 doctors and nurses around the country, employed by the Euthanasia Expertise Center.

Most euthanasia requests, however, are handled by the patient’s own physician, with whom they already have a relationship of trust. Last year, this was true for 80 percent of euthanasia procedures performed in the country.

“There are however still doctors in the Netherlands who are opposed to euthanasia,” said Kersten, adding “they have every right.”

The center’s medical team itself provided euthanasia to nearly 900 people in 2020, out of nearly 3,000 requests, with figures on the rise.

About 20 percent had dementia or psychiatric disorders.

The Netherlands’ highest court ruled in 2020 that doctors can euthanize patients with severe dementia without the fear of prosecution.

It concerns patients with advanced dementia who are no longer mentally competent but who previously had a clear request for euthanasia.

The decision followed a landmark case, not related to the Expertise center, in which a doctor was acquitted of providing euthanasia on a woman in 2016 with severe Alzheimer’s disease, who earlier requested the procedure.

Source: Voice of America

Cameroon is struggling to contain a cholera outbreak that has sickened 6,000 people with the bacteria and killed nearly 100 since February. Authorities have dispatched the ministers of health and water to affected areas and have begun quarantining cholera patients to prevent it from spreading.

Cameroon’s Public Health Ministry said the number of cholera patients received in hospitals was growing by the day.

In the seaside city of Limbe in the past week alone, 200 of 300 patients were treated and discharged from the government hospital.

Filbert Eko, the highest-ranking official in Cameroon’s Southwest region where Limbe is located, said the region was the worst hit by cholera, with more than 800 cases since February, forcing the the quarantining of patients to prevent the disease from spreading.

“The treatment center will be separated from the hospital and from the public. No outsider will be allowed to have access to the patients,” Eko said. “We don’t want contact between families and the patients. We are taking [efforts] upon ourselves, searching for resources to feed these patients free of charge.”

Cameroon’s Public Health Ministry says many of those sickened by cholera do not go to hospitals, seeking only traditional cures, and end up dying at home, though no official figures are given.

Health officials are urging traditional healers to direct their cholera patients to the closest hospital.

Linda Esso, director of epidemics and pandemics at Cameroon’s Public Health Ministry, said cholera has spread to more than 40% of major towns, including the capital, Yaounde, the economic capital, Douala, and western commercial towns like Buea, Limbe and Bafoussam. Esso said scores of villages have reported cholera cases and the entire country is threatened by the outbreak. She said the public should be very careful and protect itselves because contaminated persons may be spreading the disease without knowing it.

Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, dispatched the ministers of health and water this week to cholera-affected areas to assess the situation.

The two ministers blamed a shortage of clean drinking water in towns and villages, brought on by the long dry season, for rising cholera infections.

They said medical staff were increased in the areas and about 30 new public toilets have been constructed in Limbe, Buea, and Douala to improve public hygiene. The ministers called on the public to stop defecating in the open and in streams.

Cameroon’s minister of water, Gaston Eloundou Essomba, said officials are also providing clean water to villages and towns hit by the outbreak. He said he has asked the Cameroon Water Distribution Company (CAMWATER) to make sure trucks transport water regularly and free of charge to towns and villages that lack piped water. He said the water distribution company should immediately treat water in all community and family wells to ensure the public has quality drinking water.

Cameroon’s public health minister, Manaouda Malachie, says Douala’s New Bell Prison has become an epicenter of cholera.

He said hygiene had been improved at the prison but would not say how many of the more than 6,000 inmates were infected or died from the bacteria.

Cameroon suffers from frequent cholera outbreaks. One of the worst, in 2011, infected more than 23,000 people and killed more than 800.

Source: Voice of America

The U.K. will ban conversion therapy for gay or bisexual people in England and Wales, but not for transgender people, ITV reported Thursday.

Hours earlier, the government had confirmed an ITV report that it would drop a plan to introduce legislation to ban LGBT conversion therapy and would instead review how existing law could be utilized more effectively to prevent it.

That prompted an angry response from LGBT groups and some lawmakers.

“The Prime Minister has changed his mind off the back of the reaction to our report and he WILL now ban conversion therapy after all,” ITV political reporter Paul Brand tweeted.

“Senior Govt source absolutely assures me it’ll be in Queen’s Speech (of planned legislation). But only gay conversion therapy, not trans,” he said.

A Downing Street spokesperson declined to comment.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has come under increasing pressure on the issue after former leader Theresa May vowed in 2018 to eradicate a procedure that aims to change or suppress someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

In May last year, when the government set out its post-pandemic parliamentary agenda, it said measures would be brought forward to prevent these “abhorrent practices which can cause mental and physical harm,” starting with a consultation on how best to protect people and how to eliminate coercive practices.

Source: Voice of America

Laura Purdy is a U.S. doctor on Ukraine’s front lines. In her case, that’s a computer screen in Tennessee.

“Patients that I have talked to from some of the larger cities in Ukraine are fearful of leaving their homes because of air raid sirens or offshore attacks,” said Purdy, a surgeon who, until 2016, served in the U.S. Army’s units that provide health care to civilians worldwide. “They need/want to speak to a physician but are fearful to venture out to do so.”

Purdy now cares for patients in Kyiv and other cities under Russian attack through Starlink, an internet constellation of some 2,000 satellites operated by billionaire Elon Musk’s private firm SpaceX.

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and as of March 30, 1,189 Ukrainians had been killed and 1,901 injured, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.

U.S. doctors are stepping up to provide much-needed advice via telehealth, a practice honed during the pandemic, to the Ukranian soldiers, civilians and refugees injured in the fighting or attempting to manage chronic diseases amid the chaos.

Purdy is just one of the many physicians who have joined Aimee, a 10-year-old telehealth platform headquartered in Silicon Valley. Having built the telehealth systems for the International Space Station and SpaceX, Aimee is staffed by self-described “nerds who want to make a difference” and are now partnering with Ukraine’s Ministry of Health to provide Ukrainians with free telemedicine visits.

By using the Aimee app, Purdy said, patients can get advice and treatment recommendations from a U.S. physician while they remain in a safe location.

Milton Chen, founder and CEO of VSee, the telehealth company that launched Aimee, said a “couple thousand” physicians and a “couple hundred” translators have joined the platform to provide 24/7 telecare in Ukraine. The doctors provide care for battlefield trauma injuries as well as basics such as prenatal care, chronic disease management and mental health services.

“You could do a remote ultrasound; you could connect to a digital stethoscope to listen to someone’s heart and lung sound. All these medical signals will stream live to the physicians — so other than physically touching the patient — and the physician could get quite a bit of information on the patient,” he said via video.

Through telemedicine, Purdy treated a legally blind man who relies on his family for all his daily needs. Purdy helped him set up a free consultation with an ophthalmologist to interpret tests he underwent in Ukraine.

“This occurred in a city that was actively under attack, and we were able to provide advice and support to the patient while allowing him to stay safely sheltered in place,” she told VOA Mandarin.

The lack of medicine is one of the biggest hurdles for patients in Ukraine, said Purdy, who earned her medical degree at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

“The pharmacies have run out of medication, or they are closed. So, many times we find patients who we can give medical recommendations to, but they may not have access to the pharmaceuticals that they need to treat the condition they are experiencing,” she said.

And while remote doctors can’t solve challenges such as the lack of insulin for patients with diabetes, they can provide much-needed assistance. Dr. Mohamed Aburawi, founder and CEO of Speetar, a telehealth platform founded in 2017 to operate in Libya, told Forbes that “every day a conflict lasts, the situation worsens, and telehealth provides care, relief and stability to communities and people that need it most. Our own experience in protracted conflict highlights how telehealth maintains continuity of care for refugees, migrants and internally displaced populations.”

Telemedicine can also include teaching patients how to stop bleeding from wounds and injuries, a challenge for citizens in war zones, said Patricia Turner, executive director of the American College of Surgeons, which since 2015 has trained people without medical backgrounds through the Stop the Bleed initiative launched by the White House.

“When you bleed … you can actually die in as quickly as five minutes, so stopping the bleeding helps … save a life,” she told VOA Mandarin.

Two doctors who have family ties to Ukraine and work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, turned to telemedicine and developed a training video for Ukrainians.

Dr. Nelya Melnitchouk, a Ukraine native, came up with the idea for the video, and Dr. Eric Goralnick, who is of Ukrainian descent, helped organize the collaboration between the hospital and the Stop the Bleed initiative, according to The Boston Globe.

The training course can be finished in a few hours, Turner said, and can help health care workers and the public learn how to effectively stop bleeding.

“More than 100 people are being trained every other day,” she said. “We’re doing it via video so you can watch them on YouTube. We’re also doing them live remotely so that we can answer questions.”

Source: Voice of America