‘Please end our suffering’: Doctor, patient pleads with court on assisted dying

A Johannesburg doctor and her patient will on Monday try to persuade the High Court in Johannesburg to allow terminally ill men and women, like themselves, to end their lives on their own terms.

Palliative care specialist Dr Suzanne Walter and retiree Diethelm Harck, whom she’s been treating, have launched a bold bid to develop the law in South Africa to allow for assisted dying.

Harck has been suffering from motor neuron disease since 2013 and Walter from multiple myeloma since 2017.

The pair in their papers said they both suffered from symptoms which caused them “great pain, suffering and disability, including difficulty in swallowing and/or paralysis”.

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They described them as “intolerable and debilitating symptoms” and said they impacted their ability to “carry out every day tasks independently and in a dignified manner”.

They fear when the time comes they will be physically unable to commit suicide and were a doctor to assist them, he or she could face criminal charges as well as professional ones.

“The right to life includes the right to die with dignity,” they said.

They want the law changed to give effect to their rights to self-determination.

In the interim, though, they want the courts to declare that any sound-minded terminally ill person can approach them for an order allowing them for assisted death. And they want such an order for themselves.

This is not the first time the country’s courts have been asked to pronounce on assisted dying.

In 2015, Robert Stransham-Ford – who was at the time dying of cancer – brought an urgent application in the High

Court in Pretoria for an orderthat a doctor be legally entitled to give him medication to end his life. He wound up getting it – but died naturally two hours before.

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And the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has subsequently declared the application moot.

The two cases are, however, different in that Stransham-Ford’s case was specific to him while the one in question has been brought in the public interest as well as in the litigants’ own.

The Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) and the ministers of health and justice are opposing the application.

The HPCSA has said a prohibition on assisted dying was necessary to protect the right to life, preserve trust in the doctor-patient relationship and prevent psychological suffering.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

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