Euthanasia for young children suffering from excruciating and incurable pain will be possible in the Netherlands, the government announced on Friday, a measure that Dutch pediatricians have been demanding for years, AFP reported.

The executive specified that during the year the measure would be applied to a “small group” of five to ten children under the age of 12 “for whom palliative care options are insufficient to alleviate their suffering,” News .ro quoted.

We are talking about “children with a disease or disorder so serious that death is inevitable and (…) is expected in the foreseeable future”, explained the Minister of Health of the Netherlands, Ernst Kuipers. Assisted dying will become possible “when it is the only reasonable alternative for the doctor to end the child’s desperate and unbearable suffering,” he stressed in a letter to parliament.

In the Netherlands, euthanasia is already legal for people over the age of 12 who can give their consent, as well as for children under the age of one with parental consent.

In February 2014, Belgium became the first country in the world to allow minors “capable of insight” to choose euthanasia without age restrictions.

After reassessing the current situation, the Dutch government has decided, in turn, to expand assistance in dying “to cover children between the ages of one and 12.” In the Netherlands, “if the child is unable to make a decision, the parents will be able to do so after consulting a doctor,” Health Ministry spokesman Axel Dies told AFP.

The decision came after years of debate and was met with opposition, particularly in Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s ruling coalition, where the two parties have Christian influence.

“This is a particularly difficult issue that concerns very difficult situations,” Minister Ernst Keipers was quoted as saying in the statement.

The rules are expected to be released this year, the government said. The evaluation will take place several years after it enters into force.

On April 1, 2002, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to allow this euthanasia as a medical procedure. Belgium soon followed suit.

Every year in the Netherlands, more and more people resort to euthanasia – according to official data last year there were 8,700 of them. Most of them were suffering from incurable cancer. (News.ro)