Terminal patients to get individual rooms

The Cabinet on Friday approved a draft law addressing the rights of terminally ill patients and the obligations of health professionals caring for them, but the Socialist government stopped short of legalizing euthanasia.

The draft Palliative Care and Dignified Death Law states that patients may refuse medical treatment and sedation even if it means accelerating the moment of death. Patients will also have the right to privacy in their final moments, including access to an individual hospital room, and spiritual assistance in keeping with their faith.

Until now, most of these rights were encoded in the 2002 Patient Autonomy Law, but cases like that of Inmaculada Echevarría, who had to wait six months to be disconnected from the respirator that kept her alive, raised the need for more specific legislation.

Health Minister Leire Pajín said that the government "wanted to take a step further and move on from an assistance-based model to a system of rights and guarantees." Pajín added that this law has been in great demand and that it enjoys a broad consensus among health experts and patient advocacy groups alike.

However, the draft law does not address the thorny issues of euthanasia or assisted suicide, which are still considered crimes. Even though the ruling Socialist Party pledged in its 2004 election program to set up a congressional committee to analyze euthanasia, this initiative has been relegated to the back burner. Pajín underscored that the draft law "does not decriminalize euthanasia or assisted suicide. What it does is ensure that medical interventions avoid therapeutic cruelty and unnecessary suffering."

"A comfortable death is a popular demand, what one would wish for oneself and for relatives. It may be different when you're talking about someone you don't know, but when it happens to you, your ideas change," said Luis Montes, president of the pro-dignified death association Derecho a Morir Dignamente. Montes made headlines in 2006 after being charged- and later cleared by the courts- of illegally killing up to 400 at Leganés hospital with sedatives.

Andalusia was the first region to encode its own legislation on the subject. "A dignified life requires a dignified death," reads the preamble to the law that the Andalusian assembly passed unanimously on March 17, 2010.