2024-03-27 08:00:00
When the annual statistics on the use of medical assistance in dying (AMM) were published last October, the Minister for Health, Sonia Bélanger, did not hide her astonishment and her desire “to fully understand the reasons which ensure that in Quebec there are more requests, more MAs administered.”
It must be said that Quebec has become, in a few years, the place in the world where the use of medical assistance in dying is most frequent, accounting for 7% of deaths. This is more than double the proportion in Ontario.
However, according to information obtained by Radio-Canada, Minister Bélanger, also responsible for Seniors, selected a research project proposed by Professor Marie-Ève Bouthillier, member of the Office of Clinical Ethics of the Faculty of Medicine of the ‘Montreal university.
The research budget planned for this project under the Quebec Research Fund amounts to more than $920,000 over three years.
We have very high social acceptability and this is something that we must understand to continue to better serve Quebecers, Minister Bélanger declared in writing. I will follow the research findings closely.
Ms. Bouthillier has already published a study on MAID in 2017, where she notably showed the real causes why some doctors were reluctant to offer this end-of-life procedure.
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Marie-Ève Bouthillier, professor of clinical ethics at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Montreal (Archive photo)
Photo: University of Montreal
Around 6,000 medical assistance in dying procedures this year
Medical assistance in dying is no longer an exceptional medical procedure in Quebec.
According to data from the Commission on End of Life Care, 5,211 people received it between April 2022 and March 2023, an increase of 42% (1,548 people) compared to the previous year.
According to the Commission, this trend is not about to fade away.
AMM administered in March and June 2023 suggests that the phenomenon continues to grow […] and that this number will reach nearly 6000 MAID administered in 2023-2024″,”text”:”The number of MAi administered in March and June 2023 suggests that the phenomenon will continue to grow […] and that this number will reach nearly 6,000 AMM administered in 2023-2024″}}”>The number of AMM administered in March and June 2023 suggests that the phenomenon will continue to grow […] and that this number will reach nearly 6,000 AMM administered in 2023-2024, wrote the president of the Commission, Dr. Michel Bureau, last fall.
Quebec wishes to expand MAID to early requests for people suffering from a major neurocognitive disorder such as Alzheimer’s disease from the fall.
Minister Sonia Bélanger recently asked the federal government to make an amendment to the Criminal Code only in Quebec in order to protect health professionals from possible prosecution.
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