Why these Japanese patients wanted to die in Switzerland

Ester Unterfinger/swissinfo.ch

• MP3 file
• Description

Journalists discuss how two Japanese people came to Switzerland for assisted suicide

In this second part of our two-part series on assisted suicide, reporter Kaoru Uda tells host Susan Misicka what it was like to accompany two Japanese patients who came to Switzerland to die.

Both patients had severe, incurable neurological disorders. Aina, a 30-year-old woman, had suffered since childhood. Yoshi, a 40-year-old man, had been in serious decline over the past five years.

Reporter Kaoru had the unique experience of accompanying both patients on their journeys to die in Basel. In this episode of The Swiss Connection, she explains how she got to know the patients and their families. She tells us what it was like to witness their final hours, and how it changed her own perceptions of life and death.

This episode is the second of a two-part series on the topic of assisted suicide. In the previous episode, we heard from Swiss doctor Erika Preisig, who founded LifecircleExternal link to help gravely ill patients end their lives.

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