New protocols, being issued by medical authorities in European regions most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, instruct medical personnel effectively to abandon elderly patients to their fate. Pictured: A pre-triage medical tent is set up in front of Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, Italy on February 25, 2020. (Photo by Carlo Bressan/AFP via Getty Images)
by Soeren Kern
April 11, 3030
With well over a half-million confirmed cases of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Europe, a growing number of regional medical authorities have begun issuing guidelines and protocols that call for hospitals to prioritize younger patients over those who are older.
In Italy and Spain, the two countries most affected by the coronavirus pandemic in Europe, doctors in overwhelmed intensive care units have for weeks been making life or death decisions about who receives emergency treatment. The new protocols, however, amount to government directives that instruct medical personnel effectively to abandon elderly patients to their fate.
In addition to the ethical questions raised by the rationing of healthcare according to age, the denial of medical attention to the elderly, many of whom have paid into the social welfare system all their lives, also casts a spotlight on the shortcomings of socialized medicine in Southern Europe, where austerity measures imposed by the European Central Bank have resulted in massive budget cuts for public healthcare.
In Spain, the regional government in Catalonia, an area hit hard by the coronavirus, issued a confidential protocol which effectively advises that elderly people afflicted by the coronavirus should die at home.
In documents leaked to several Spanish media outlets, the Catalan Emergency Medical Service (Servicio de Emergencias Médicas, SEM) instructed doctors, nurses and ambulance personnel to inform the families of older patients suffering from coronavirus that “death at home is the best option.”
The document stated that dying at home was more humane as it avoids suffering: patients can die while surrounded by their families, something that is not possible in overcrowded hospitals. The protocol also advised medical personnel to avoid referring to the lack of hospital beds in Catalonia.
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