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Fiona Hanson/PA Archive/Press Association Images

Mobile euthanasia service launched in Netherlands

The units will travel the country offering eligible patients the chance to end their lives in their own homes.

A MOBILE EUTHANASIA service has been launched in the Netherlands, with teams of doctors and nurses travelling the country to help terminally ill people who wish to end their lives.

The service is being run by the Right to Die NL group, which said its medics would check whether patients meet the country’s strict legal criteria for euthanasia.

“If they comply, the teams will carry out the euthanasia at patients’ homes should their normal doctors refuse to help them,” a spokesperson told AFP.

According to the BBC, patients will be able to either have lethal injections administered to them, or drink a compound of drugs themselves.

One of those behind the project, retired judge Jan Suyver, told the broadcaster:

If you are so ill and you know it is not going to get better then at least you can choose to die surrounded by your family, you can choose to ‘die consciously’ so you know what’s happening and you are in control.

Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands for people who have no prospect of recovery from a condition which is causing them unbearable pain, according to the Guardian.

More: A “strong case” for offering assisted death to terminally ill, says UK report>

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