After the death of former President Ion Iliescu, the doctor Iuliu Torje, specialist in anesthesia and intensive care, draws an alarm about the lack of a legal framework for palliative care in Romania.
The doctor points out that, 35 years after the first free elections, our country does not have a law that regulates the limitation of unnecessary invasive therapies and the right of patients to die with dignity. In the last weeks of life, Iliescu was held in artificial life, under conditions that did not bring hope, but only the extension of suffering.
In his opinion, the suffering is too big and pointless / photo source: Iulian Torje Facebook
“Romania, 35 years after the first free elections, does not have a law for palliative care. It does not have a medical or social culture of limiting unnecessary invasive therapies. It has no legal tools to support a man to leave, quietly, when the fight has ended”, the ATI doctor stressed.
Torje pointed out for Hotnews.ro that Iliescu was artificially held in life in recent weeks, in the hospital, given that, in his case, medicine did not bring hope, but only suffering.
“He died slowly, in a way that I do not want anyone: tracheostomized, cancer, with multiple comorbidities, artificially held in life for weeks, in an intensive therapy, which, in his case, did not extend the agony. Active medicine does not bring hope, but only suffering. emphasized the specialist, who is also the counselor of the Minister of Health, Alexandru Rogobete.
In his opinion, in such situations, the suffering is too high and meaningless, and the dignity of the patient is not respected, which is advantageous that a real debate in society is needed on how the end of life can be managed for those who cannot offer healing solutions.
“No one deserves such an end. No one should be transformed into an inert body, related to devices, with a silent tracheostoma, into a room where there is no hope … Only the silence between the monitors,” Torje explained.
“And maybe, precisely by his suffering, we should start a sincere discussion about how we choose to die in Romania. Or, more correctly, about how we are not allowed to die with dignity.”concluded the anesthetist doctor in the message indicating the legislative vacuum in the case of patients in the terminal stage.
