Comox Valley needs a secular hospice

Re: “Expansion brings assisted-dying issue to fore,” April 18. After reading about expansion of the Comox Valley Hospice beds, I would like to underscore Island Health’s important role in this decision-making process. Island Health needs to prioritize health planning that puts people first — not politics.

Backroom deals that take away the public’s right to input on end-of-life care decisions, at a time when the valley is building and expanding into new facilities, is leaving us — the taxpayers and community — out.

I urge Island Health to provide Comox Valley residents with the same care and availability of options — including the option of “medical assistance in dying” — as are offered in many communities on Vancouver Island and elsewhere in Canada.

We do not want a Catholic monopoly over our end-of-life care, and Island Health can make sure that doesn’t happen.

Island Health can ensure that any new facility be a non-faith-based facility and that a secular hospice be co-located within it. The new Comox Valley Hospice must be allowed to offer medical assistance in dying.

Many of us baby boomers will probably want to die at home, but the increased number of health complications, as we near our time of death, will make dying at home probably not a viable option.

So, Island Health, please support us, as we near our end, in knowing that we can opt for medical assistance in dying at our local hospice, our secular long-term care facility and our community non-faithbased hospital, here in the Comox Valley. No transfers, please. Janet Shaw Courtenay