ASL rejects assisted suicide request for PMS patient

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 28 - A local health authority has "once again rejected" a request for assisted suicide presented by Martina Oppelli, a 49-year-old architect from Trieste with progressive multiple sclerosis (PMS), the Luca Coscioni Association said on Wednesday.
    The association reported that, "despite the deterioration of her condition and an order issued by the tribunal of Trieste imposing a new medical evaluation", local health authority ASUGI denied the patient's "access to voluntary death, ignoring sentence 135 of the Constitutional Court" issued this year, and "condemning Martina to endless suffering".
    The association said ASUGI initially denied the woman access to assisted suicide as, according to the first report it issued, the therapies she was being subjected to and the constant assistance of "third persons to undertake any type of activity including nutrition and hydration and the use of bronchodilators did not constitute treatments of vital support".
    Given the patient's worsening condition, the court ordered ASUGI to re-evaluate her case within the following 30 days as Oppelli had in the meantime become completely dependent on a life-saving machine.
    But ASUGI "confirmed its denial, based on a report downplaying the role of treatment on which Martina depends on a daily basis", said the association.
    Attorney Filomena Gallo, secretary of the Luca Coscioni Association, said the organization she represents will take action against the report which has "grave consequences for Oppelli", she said.
    Last month, the Constitutional Court ruled that judges will need to evaluate each judicial case regarding medically assisted suicide in the absence of legislation regulating the matter.
    The court said a judge will need to independently evaluate "on the basis of the principles already outlined in a sentence issued in 2019 whether a person can be indicted in relation to the practice of assisted suicide".
    The reference is to the Constitutional Court's 2019 so-called 'Cappato ruling', named after the Luca Coscioni Association's right-to-die campaigner Marco Cappato, making assisted suicide permissible in Italy in some circumstances.
    The requirements outlined in the 2019 sentence included the presence of an irreversible pathology, unbearable physical or psychological suffering and the patient's reliance on treatments of vital support, among others. (ANSA).