On 9 October, Andrea Lago Ordonez “died at 12 years of age after having been deprived of food and given minimal amounts of water for 4 days at the University Hospital of Santiago de Compostela in Spain”.
This case incited numerous doctors and civilians to try and prevent the death of this little girl who was not at the end of her life. She was suffering from a serious degenerative disease and had been placed under sedation. She was fed artificially by stomach tube and artificial hydration.“Her parents asked for feeding to stop”. The hospital initially refused “because the young girl was not suffering”. However, the parents subsequently “asked for the feeding tube to be removed and for their daughter to be given substantially less water”.
The doctors who spoke out against this approach are afraid of a “genuine spin-off towards euthanasia through stopping food and water”.
IEB (20/10/2015)