Woman at centre of Italy’s euthanasia controversy dies

ELUANA ENGLARO, the comatose accident victim at the centre of a right-to-die drama gripping Italy, died yesterday as lawmakers debated a bill to force doctors to restore her life support.

Health Minister Maurizio Sacconi made the announcement, carried on Italian television, to the Senate as the chamber began debate on controversial emergency legislation aimed at keeping Englaro alive.

Doctors in Udine, northeast Italy, stopped feeding the 38-year-old woman on Friday amid a flurry of efforts to keep her from dying, with conservative prime minister Silvio Berlusconi accused of politicising the affair.

The Vatican reacted swiftly to the news of Englaro’s death, imploring God to “forgive” those responsible. Englaro’s father Beppino Englaro, who had battled for years for her right to die, asked to be allowed time on his own before speaking to reporters, the all-news channel Sky TG24 reported.

Berlusconi said he learned of Englaro’s death “with deep pain”, news reports said. “The bitterness is great that the government could not act to save a life,” he said.

Englaro’s family won a lengthy court battle in November to allow her to die after she spent 17 years in a coma following a traffic accident. President Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign an emergency decree issued by Berlusconi’s cabinet on Friday that would have prevented doctors from withholding her food.

Englaro’s longtime neurologist, Carlo Alberto Defanti, had earlier predicted she could remain alive another eight to 10 days, until February 17 to 19. Defanti said he felt he was doing “the right thing” in assisting her death. “I am helping a person achieve her own wish, a defenceless person who was betrayed by everyone except her father and a few other people.”

An arduous legal battle ended in November after courts were satisfied Englaro’s coma was irreversible and she had clearly expressed her wish not be kept alive artificially when a close friend fell into a coma after an accident.