Right
to live and die with dignity
The subject related to the
right of individuals to a dignified death is being discussed since a long time. Euthanasia continues to be illegal in India, though the 2011 Supreme
Court judgment in Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug v Union of India & Ors allowed
withdrawal of life support in the case of patients who are permanently in a
vegetative state with no chance of recovery. It made a distinction between
passive and active euthanasia, the
former being withdrawal of treatment while the latter indicating the active
process of causing death through medical interventions.
India is one of the worst countries to die in,
especially for those suffering from terminal illnesses. In 2015, the Economist
Intelligence Unit brought out a Quality of Death Index, which ranked India 67th
out of the 80 countries. The World Health Organization and the World Bank
revealed that 49 million Indians are pushed into poverty every year due to
out-of-pocket expenditure on healthcare, accounting for half of the 100 million
who meet such a fate worldwide. India’s Central Bureau of Health Intelligence
data puts the figure even higher. This speaks for the sorry state of our public
health system.
Treatment for the terminally ill continues to
involve prolonging life with expensive, invasive, and painful treatment with
very little concern for the patients themselves or their families. When a
government fails to ensure a life with dignity for the sick and the elderly, it
loses all moral authority to deny people the right to a dignified death.
Capital punishment is upheld by law, and
“encounter killings” are given legitimacy under sweeping legal provisions in
both paramilitary and police operations. However, the demand for the right to
death for individual citizens is not acceptable.
Government spends tax payers’ money in just
building brick-mortar structure, so called government hospitals which lacks all
the necessary facilities such as ICU, Vital medicines, specialist doctors. Building
a national level health sector think tank which would make, implement and
oversee policies is need of the hour. Otherwise denying people right to death
doesn't make much sense.
Debate on right to live and die must be
integrated with healthcare as well as political and economic system. While
poverty causes people to ignore mild diseases till advanced stage where by they
are pushed to a position where they are incurable, the political situation
causes alarm in states where encounters and police brutality injure people critically
and often they succumb to prolonged illness. If right to life and dignified
death is to be respected, medical care and health sector must be given top
priority. Very few want to end their life unless their physical and mental
condition allows them to think of death. If excellent medication, detection of
diseases at an early stage, accessibility of hospitals to poorest of poor is
available, grievous injuries during police operations, are reduced, etc., desire
of dying will be reduced and right to life will have full meaning and value
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