Around five Brits per month enquire about ending their lives at a Swiss clinic, it has been revealed.
According to The Times, a spokesman for Pegasos reported that its suicide clinic “handles around 65 cases per year from the UK”.
Perry Davenport boasted that the business has a “wider interpretation of who will qualify” for an assisted suicide than other clinics, including those who healthy and are only suffering from grief or depression.
Depression
Wendy Duffy from the West Midlands received help from Pegasos to kill herself last month, after she had struggled to come to terms with the tragic loss of her son.
Davenport claimed that “all the obvious attempts to ease depression” of the 56-year-old mother had failed and admitted to being present at her death.
But Dr Gordon Macdonald of Care Not Killing described the incident as “absolutely disgraceful”.
In a statement released after her assisted suicide, he said: “The UK government should be doing something to stop people operating from the UK to facilitate it, and the Swiss government should be doing something to stop it being made available to vulnerable foreign nationals”.
Last year, a woman in the Republic of Ireland was reportedly not informed about her mother’s assisted suicide until receiving a WhatsApp message two days after her death.
Maureen Slough, a 58-year-old from County Cavan, told her family she was going on holiday to Lithuania but she actually visited the Pegasos clinic in Switzerland. She had struggled with mental health and previously tried to commit suicide after the death of her two sisters.
Although Pegasos reported that Maureen’s daughter Megan Royal had confirmed her mother’s intentions, Megan claimed the acknowledgment letter may have been forged.
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