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Euthanasia campaigner dies
15/03/2007 07:18 - (SA)
Madrid - A bedridden Spanish woman with muscular dystrophy, whose case triggered a nationwide debate on euthanasia in Spain, saw her wish come true and died after doctors turned off the respirator that kept her alive.
Inmaculada Echevarria, 51, from the southern city of Granada, had won her right to end her life under a law which grants the right to refuse treatment.
Echevarria died at 21:00 on Wednesday after her life support was switched off, the regional department of Andalucia said.
On Wednesday Echevarria had been transferred to a state hospital where she could complete her wish after being treated at a Catholic hospital which had provoked criticism from Spanish bishops who said she was committing euthanasia.
Echevarria had progressive muscular dystrophy and had been on a respirator for the past ten years. She had fell sick at age 11 and for the last 20 years she had been in a hospital bed.
"For me, life stopped having meaning a long time ago. I want them to help me die because I have spent my whole life suffering," Echevarria told reporters last year when her case got media attention in support on the rights of people with incurable diseases to seek help in dying.
Euthanasia is illegal in Spain and people who help someone else die can be punished with at least six months in prison.
An Oscar-winning Spanish film Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside), about the life and death of Ramon Sampredro, a Spanish paraplegic who campaigned for euthanasia, reignited the debate three years ago.
Sampedro spent 30 years in bed and ultimately died by sipping water laced with cyanide in 1998. He did this after crafting a complex scheme to have friends prepare and deliver the poison in incremental steps so no single one of them could be charged criminally.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately known. She is survived by her son.
- AP
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