In an interview given to our colleagues at The cross And Release, Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday that a bill on the end of life will be presented to the Council of Ministers in April. For the first time, the Head of State takes a position on a major social issue.
In the presidential text, it will be neither euthanasia nor assisted suicide but “assisted dying”. Support which will be reserved for adults, capable of full discernment. Another condition is having an incurable illness and a life-threatening prognosis in the short or medium term as well as physical or psychological suffering that cannot be relieved. After the patient’s request, a medical team will have to make a decision.
“That’s not what the French need”
Guest of Europe 1 Matin, Ségolène Perruchio, head of the palliative care department at the Rives de Seine Hospital Center and vice-president of the SPAF (French Society for Support and Palliative Care), spoke out against this “aid to die”. “That’s not what the French need, that’s not what our patients need, we who are faced with the end of life on a daily basis, we know that we are capable, we know TO DO, [on sait] support people properly as long as we are given the means,” she began.
“Palliative care can also be the rehumanization of care”
At the microphone of Dimitri Pavlenko, the vice-president of the SPAF remembers a patient who left his mark. “We welcomed a patient suffering from Charcot’s disease into the department. This patient was around sixty years old and he had come from an nursing home, which was not at all suitable for him but there was no other solutions for him. He came to us because he asked to die, because the untrained nursing home caregivers, with few resources, did not know how to manage this request,” she says before continue. “When he arrived at our house, he of course reiterated this request but after a few days, he completely gave in, he stopped [l’aide à mourir] ask”.
For what ? Ségolène Perruchio explains it by the interest shown in the patient. “We looked at him differently, it seems complicated to understand but we looked at him as a person. We listened to him in his suffering, in his difficulties and we reassured him about the conditions of his death. We said that we would be by his side, that we would not let him suffocate or that kind of thing which obviously is very scary,” she recalls. Palliative care focuses on looking at the patient as a whole person, she reminds Europe 1. “Palliative care can also be the rehumanization of care,” she says.
“The indignity is the way society looks at these people”
The bill, presented in April to the Council of Ministers and which will reach the National Assembly on May 27, will have three parts. One of them will be the development of palliative care. According to a report from the Court of Auditors, cited by Ségolène Perruchio, today, in France, one in two patients who should benefit from palliative care cannot benefit from it. “We are going to put palliative care back at the heart of support,” said the tenant of the Élysée, who announced that a palliative care unit (USP) will be created in the 21 departments which still do not have one. One billion euros will also be invested.
According to an Ifop survey for the JDD, 70% of French people are in favor of promoting active assistance in dying. A figure that the head of the palliative care department at the Rives de Seine Hospital Center explains by “fear”. “Death is scary. The finitude of man remains something complex that philosophers have studied for millennia, so obviously, it’s scary. Today, death has disappeared from our societies and we have this image that death is necessarily suffering, that death is necessarily difficulty, that the loss of autonomy is undignified. Indeed, it is hard, it is even extremely hard, no one wants to lose their autonomy but the indignity , this is the way society looks at these people,” she denounces.