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It was a ‘personal and ethical conception of the right to health’ that pushed the former director general of Lombardy Health Carlo Lucchina to prevent Eluana Englaro from having the treatment that kept her in a vegetative state interrupted.
This was written by the Court of Auditors who condemned it on appeal. Lucchina to pay the treasury approximately 175 thousand euros that the Region had had to compensate Beppino Englaro, who had been forced to transfer the woman to a health facility in Friuli where she died. The news is reported in the Milanese pages of “Il Corriere della Sera”.
“It was not a conscientious objection, but the directives also received from the regional attorney’s office were applied,” said the former director who will evaluate whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. Commenting on the Court of Auditors’ decision, Eluana’s father, Beppino Englaro, said that “they could have avoided everything they did. Now they realize, it’s clear that they made a mistake and they have to answer for it.”
“They – he added – obstructed, I acted legally, whoever obstructed will see it now. I knew I had a right and it was clear that they were hindering it, so much so that I had to leave the region. Now it’s their problem, I had to do justice myself, always within the law and in society, they committed something they shouldn’t have committed. Everything was clear to me even then, I had to ignore them and go my own way.”
Eluana Englaro died on February 9, 2009 at the age of 39, 17 of which were spent in an irreversible vegetative state after a very serious road accident. The year before, her father Beppino had been denied the possibility of interrupting the artificial feeding that kept his daughter alive by the general director Luchina despite the fact that in 2007 the Court of Cassation had established that each individual can refuse the treatments to which he is subjected if he deems them unsustainable and degrading, and in 2008 the Court of Appeal of Milan authorized the interruption of treatment on this basis. When Beppino Englaro, in his capacity as guardian, asked for the suspension of nutrition for his daughter, the director signed a note which said that the health facilities deal with the care of patients, which includes nutrition, and consequently the health workers who had they suspended it they would have “failed to fulfill their professional obligations”.
Englaro turned to the Regional Administrative Court which accepted his request, but the Region did not carry out the sentence and a month later Eluana died in a facility in Udine where her treatment was stopped. The Lombardy Region was sentenced to pay approximately 175 thousand euros for the damages suffered by the Englaro family. Hence the proceedings before the Court of Auditors for Lucchina.
