Posted on Thursday 28th February 2019 at 6:12pm

Belgium's Federal Commission for Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia has released a summary report of cases for the 2018 calendar year. Numbers have stabilised, with a tiny 1.8% increase on the figures for the previous year. All cases were found to have met the essential conditions of the Euthanasia Act. Below is an English translation of the report.

Belgium Euthanasia - Figures for the year 2018

By Jan Eyckmans

Posted on 28/02/2019

These figures relate to the registration documents for euthanasia carried out between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2018 examined by the Commission. A more detailed analysis of euthanasia reported in 2018 will be made in the next biennial report of the Commission (gathering data for 2018 and 2019).

Posted on Friday 1st February 2019 at 8:55pm

The USA state of Colorado legalised assisted dying via its End Of Life Options [#145] Act in 2016. Its Department of Public Health & Environment has just published its second annual report of statistics of medications dispensed and deaths.

Unfortunately, the Colorado statistics report only all deaths of those prescribed life-ending medications, not those who died using the medication.

In 2017, 70 people who had been prescribed life-ending medication died, representing 0.19% of all deaths.* With Oregon and Washington states clearly showing around 30% of people prescribed lethal medication die without using it, that represents 49 people and 0.13% of all deaths.