Right to life includes right to dignified death: C onsumer rights activist

Udupi Human Rights Protection Foundation president Dr. Ravindranath Shanbhag (right) and District Legal Services Authority Member Secretary P. R. Yogish participate in a workhsop on living will at Vaikunta Baliga College of Law in Udupi on January 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: UMESH S SHETTIGAR

Consumer rights activist Ravindranath Shanbhag said there is an imminent need for institutionalising living will, as the Right to Life also includes the ‘right to die’ to enable a person to die in a dignified manner.

Dr. Shanbhag, who is the president of Udupi Human Rights Protection Foundation, was speaking on ‘The fundamental Right to Die in a Dignified Manner (Living Will)‘ at a workshop organised at the Vaikunta Baliga College of Law in Udupi on January 1.

Living Will, or Advance Medical Directive, is the one given by a person when one is under stable mental condition on realising that one could not get back to a healthy living condition due to accidents, or any other natural reasons. Dr. Shanbhag cited the example of Aruna Shanbaug, wherein the nurse who was raped and fatally assaulted by an attendant in 1973 had remained in a hospital bed in Mumbai for 42 years.

Though a Bill on Living Will was introduced in Parliament in 2016, the same could not be taken forward for want of numbers. In 2018, the Supreme Court had declared that dying with dignity is one of the fundamental rights of a human being.

According to Dr. Shanbhag, the court had said that an adult person with sound mental condition had every right to decline medical treatment, including withdrawal of life-saving equipment. However, the same is yet to get a legislative framework. There is also a need for extensive debate on ‘living will’ and everyone should work towards its implementation, Dr. Shanbhag said.

The Intensive Care Units in hospitals are not meant for those aged 90-plus, but for younger people. “When there is no guarantee that a person could not be brought back to a healthy living condition, what is the need for providing medical treatment to such persons?” Dr. Shanbhag said age-related illness is not an illness at all, and such persons are not patients. “Treatment should be given to patients. Death is a natural phenomenon,” he said.

District Legal Services Authority Member-Secretary P. R. Yogish said the authority would always join hands in organising such awareness programmes. “When a person was on a deathbed, one should not die under inhu​man conditions. Dying with dignity is everyone’s right. However, ‘living will’ should not be obtained for any consideration,” he added.