First authorization for assisted suicide in Italy

(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 23 - The ethics committee of the health authority of the Marche region has authorized assisted suicide to be practised in Italy for the first time, right-to-death campaigners said on Tuesday.
    The case regards a tetraplegic man who is bed-bound after being paralysed from the shoulder down due to a car accident 11 years ago.
    "I feel lighter," said the man, who is being called Mario although that is not his real name, according to a statement by the Luca Coscioni Association, which is helping him in his bid to commit assisted suicide.
    "I have freed myself of all the tension accumulated over the years.
    "I am tired and I want to be free to choose the end of my life.
    "No one can say that I am not too bad to continue to live in these conditions and (thus) condemn me to a life of torture.
    "Everyone should take their responsibilities, putting aside ideology, hypocrisy and indifference because the lives of sick people are being played with".
    Mario is the first person to be granted the all-clear for assisted suicide after the Constitutional Court in 2019 called on the Italian parliament to fill a vacuum regarding end-of-life legislation.
    That call was made in relation to the case of Luca Coscioni Association Treasurer Marco Cappato helping a blind, paraplegic man commit assisted suicide in Switzerland in 2017. (ANSA).