Belgium suggests that older people with Covid-19 die outside hospitals

Older and weaker people who contract Covid-19 should die in nursing homes instead of being hospitalized.

These people will not die in hospitals, but in places of care especially for them; because of the low probability of survival if they contract the virus.

This is the directive that the Belgian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics has sent to the doctors of the country’s geriatric hospitals, and which has been attracting the attention of the media these days.

The recommendation was published on the institution’s website, and concerns mostly those patients in whom it is evident that the Coronavirus will be fatal.

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In particular, for patients suffering from dementia and physical problems that weaken them to such an extent that they already have a prior prognosis of death of up to one year.

“There’s nothing more we can do”

“These are patients for whom treatment can prolong life, but who have little chance of recovery,” said Neele Van Den Noortgate, head of the geriatrics department in Ghent and professor at the university hospital there.

“In hospitals there is nothing more we can do for them than provide good palliative care from which they can also benefit in nursing homes.”

“It would be inhumane to transport them to the hospital to die there,” Van Den Noortgate added.

It is now, due to the saturation of hospitals by the pandemic, that these guidelines are most insisted upon. Although according to the professor, it is also implemented in patients who have other pathologies.

“Good care also means daring to realize that people go from life to death and making sure the process does not extend unnecessarily,” he said.

It should be noted that Belgium is one of the few European countries, together with the Netherlands and Luxembourg, where euthanasia is legal.

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