“I am seeking care, not euthanasia!”
Such is the message of the nation-wide campaign launched by Alliance VITA on 13th November 2024. At a time when the French population are becoming ever more concerned about the failings of the health system and their difficulty in accessing treatments, the legalisation of assisted suicide and euthanasia appear even more shameful and hazardous.
The shortage of medical staff, the saturation of A&E, crises in care homes and for the accompaniment of the aged, the inadequacy of palliative care, overloaded pain-relief centres, the deterioration of mental health: such are the symptoms of a health system in multiform crisis. Patients and their families are subjected to increasing bottlenecks in their search for treatment. Waiting times are a source of stress which is all the more justified in that it results in penalising delay for appointments.
When confronted with this problem which calls for urgent, ambitious and durable responses, the government has chosen the easy way out by announcing the return, at the end of January, of a bill on the end of life intending to lift the prohibition on killing.
Alliance VITA is calling on all those experiencing difficulties in accessing treatment and who share their concern for the true urgencies for public health, to:
• Join a virtual queue demonstrating the growing bottlenecks, queues and impatience of the French public who are seeking care, not euthanasia.
• To bear witness to the delays in a particular domain following the difficulties experienced in gaining access to treatments (region, speciality, nature of the delay).
• Share massively this campaign through social media.
According to Tugdual Derville, the Alliance VITA spokesman and author of [ “Doctor have I the right to live a little longer?” – Euthanasia and assisted suicide unmasked] (2023):
“In the highly stressed budgetary context, whereas the means deployed for accompanying the aged at their end of life are far from meeting needs and that a demographic bubble of old age is rearing its head, legislation on euthanasia is even more irresponsible or even indecent : how can one ignore the risk that those suffering will turn to administered death due to the lack of access to appropriate care ? It is time to respond to this glaring failure of access to care, definitely not to open the door to euthanasia or assisted suicide by prescription.”
The Alliance VITA campaign will be deployed from 13th November via the Internet and social media and will be relayed throughout the regions by the Association members.
