Right-to-die campaigner and Australian doctor, Philip Nitschke, is knocking on Asia Pacific’s doorstep to set up an assisted suicide clinic in Fiji, AFP reports.
Nitschke, head of Exit International, claimed that euthanasia, or assisted suicide, is a “very humane process” and he plans to set up a clinic in Fiji for patients from the Asia-Pacific region. He told Sydney Morning Herald that it will be “easier for people from Asia-Pacific who wanted to end their lives to do so, rather than to travel to Europe”, adding that only seriously ill patients of sound mind would be permitted to sign up for a voluntary death.
The Dignitas center in Switzerland, a clinic for the same purpose, ‘assisted’ 144 people who wanted to end their lives in 2011. Most of them were not Swiss nationals.
Euthanasia is illegal in most countries around the world, especially in Catholic nations. Nitschke is the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, voluntary, lethal injection to end a life. He has campaigned for euthanasia for more than a decade.
