Official annual report on the practice of euthanasia and assisted suicide in The Netherlands in 2011.
This is the annual report for 2011 of the five regional euthanasia review committees in The Netherlands on the working of that country’s 2002 ‘Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act’.
The report provides details of the number of reported cases of voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide; the nature of the cases; the committees’ findings; and the considerations on which these were based.
The report reveals, among other things, that the number of reported cases of euthanasia and assisted suicide in The Netherlands in 2011 (3,695) was nearly double the number reported (1,882) in the first year of the Act’s operation. Approximately 1 in every 37 deaths in The Netherlands is now the result of legal euthanasia or assisted suicide.
While an increase in the reporting rate has played a part in the increase in numbers, this is far from being the whole story. An officially-sponsored evaluation of the 2002 Act, carried out in 2012, found that the number of requests for euthanasia or assisted suicide had increased from 9,700 to 13,400.
LDW-Research-NL-2011-Report