In connection with the Olympe affair, Yves de Locht returns in “Le Parisien” to the conditions necessary to benefit from assisted suicide in Belgium.
Par LePoint.fr
© Jean-Luc Flémal / MAXPPP / BELPRESS/MAXPPP
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Ln January 17, the French youtuber Olympe announced on social networks her intention to resort to assisted suicide by the end of the year. At 23, suffering from dissociative identity disorder (DID), a serious psychiatric illness, Olympe declared that she was already in contact with Belgian doctors. One of them spoke with The ParisianMonday, January 23, anxious to redefine the framework in which an assisted end of life is legal in his country, where more and more French people are going to die.
“I haven’t seen his medical file yet, but I’ve read his emails,” confirms Yves de Locht regarding the young Olympe’s request. “You can euthanize young people, but you need certificates or medical documents from psychiatry which will certify that, despite all the treatments, it is impossible to cure her”, specifies the doctor, who adds that “it will be for her a long and difficult path.
Because Belgian law only authorizes medically assisted suicide under three strict conditions: “The doctor must already have a written request from the person concerned, lists Yves de Locht. Then, you must be suffering from a serious and incurable disease certified by medical documents. The third condition is to present physical or psychological suffering that cannot be alleviated despite all the treatments available. »
“You have been debating this subject for years and years”
The doctor deplores it, “the Belgian model is caricatured by the French, especially by the French opponents to euthanasia, who talk nonsense regarding our practice. In reality, the application of the 2002 law on euthanasia is strictly controlled: “After each euthanasia, there is a control commission. In Belgium, the euthanasia vending machine does not work! »
In France, the question of the end of life is more than ever under debate. A citizens’ convention has been meeting since December 2022 to examine the possibility of legalizing medically assisted suicide. Since the launch of the debate, Yves de Locht says he has received more requests from French people: “This debate seems to stir people in their conscience”, he notes. With the French daily, he does not hide a certain annoyance: “You have been debating this subject for years and years. »
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“We watch it from afar, it makes us smile a little, we have the impression that nothing concrete will come of it. It’s a shame, because this problem is very serious. When I see French patients arriving in terrible states, I no longer smile at all,” he adds. Because the care of French patients, in addition to the many Belgian requests, is difficult to manage for the doctor. Belgium, he reminds us, cannot have a vocation to “become the place of death for the French”.
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