Is this type of care legal?

With regards to your letter They Are Our Heroes, this letter raises many concerns.

Your publishing of the letter seems to give praise to the palliative care system in Bassetlaw and to the nursing care at the Victoria Care Home. However, the writer of the letter says that ‘water was withheld... to hasten the end’, after the patient had been declared ‘terminally ill.’

Firstly, many patients declared terminally ill survive longer than expected, against the odds. No doctor can say with certainty when a patient will die.

Secondly, to hasten the end by withholding water is surely questionable to say the least, if not illegal.

Other similar cases have come to my attention, and I know of one in particular which closely resembles the one described.

Rather than talking of ‘brave doctors and nurses’ and ‘heroes’, should we not be questioning this kind of health care?

D. G

Worksop

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