Deaths by euthanasia in Belgium have hit a record high, new government figures have revealed.
The number of people dying by a lethal injection at the hands of their doctors has also nearly doubled in the space of just 10 years, according to the Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia.
Statistics show that in 2023 there was a total of 3,423 euthanasia deaths, an increase of 15 per cent on the 2,966 euthanasia deaths in 2022. In 2013, the number of recorded euthanasia deaths was 1,807.
The 2022 deaths represented a 10 per cent increase on the euthanasia deaths of the previous year in line with an almost uninterrupted year-on-year increase since the practice was legalised in Belgium in 2002 for people suffering unbearably from terminal illness.
In almost a quarter of recorded cases, the reason given for euthanasia was poly-pathologies, rather than terminal illness, in which patients suffer from a range of complaints such as a loss of vision or hearing, arthritis and incontinence. In half of these cases, the patients were not dying from their illnesses.
In more than 75 per cent of cases, a combination of physical and psychological suffering were given as reasons for the euthanasia to proceed.
Scientific studies estimate, though, that somewhere between 25 per cent and to 35 per cent of all euthanasia deaths are undeclared.