ESSEN, GERMANY (VINnews) — A German doctor at the Essen University hospital has been charged with manslaughter after he allegedly administered lethal medication to two critically ill patients with coronavirus, causing their immediate death.
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The patients, aged 47 and 50 ,died on November 13 and 17, but suspicions were raised about the way they died and the hospital contacted police and removed the doctor from duty.
Police arrested the 44-year-old doctor, who had been employed at the hospital since February and charged him with manslaughter. In one case the accused admitted that he wanted to end the further suffering of the patient and his relatives. Both patients had been in “very critical conditions” in the doctor’s ward, suffering from coronavirus infections.
The German daily Bild reported that the doctor had informed the patients’ families before killing them with a lethal injection.
German law allows for assisted procedures to precipitate death of seriously ill patients if the patients make a formal request but there are several more steps before such assistance is provided and these were apparently not followed by the Essen doctor..
Assisted death is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany in light of the Nazi mass euthenasia program for handicapped people which was deemed “mercy death” but actually caused the involuntary deaths of 275,000 to 300,000 people.