One of the most chilling memories of the COVID-19 pandemic has to be the way in which people who contracted the infection — especially in the first year of the pandemic — died in intensive care units, alone and scared.
The pandemic thus perhaps give a better perspective into the issue of how “overmedicalised” death has become and how increasing overreliance on medical interventions towards the end of life increases the suffering of the dying, as noted by the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death, in its report (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02314-X/fulltext) released on Tuesday.
“Two generations ago, the community rallied around the family of the dying, offered them all support and compassion and thus reduced the spectre of death into an acceptable, inevitable event, with minimal suffering to the dying person. Today, every person belonging to the middle class die a lonely, anxious death in ICUs, a tube down his throat and amongst an array of machines emitting beeps and sirens. The young doctors of the day genuinely believe that it is their duty to sustain life at any cost, while for the families, the prospect of death is so scary and unfamiliar that they would rather entrust it to hospitals . It is time we taught people to face death with equanimity, to allow their loved ones to die in comfort, with the support of the medical community,” M.R. Rajagopal, chairman of Pallium India and one of the members of the commission, told The Hindu.
