Why these Japanese patients wanted to die in Switzerland
Ester Unterfinger/swissinfo.ch
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.
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Kaoru is a multimedia journalist who has worked for www.swissinfo.ch since 2017. She had worked before as police reporter and later political reporter for a Japanese regional paper for a decade. When she is not writing, she devotes herself to tennis and volleyball.
Not content to mind her own business, Susan studied journalism in Boston so she’d have the perfect excuse to put herself in other people’s shoes and worlds. When not writing, she presents and produces podcasts and videos.
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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Aina, a Japanese woman with a rare neurological disorder, came to Basel to die. The journey made her question her motivation.
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A Japanese man came all the way to Switzerland to die. SWI swissinfo.ch accompanied him on the final part of his journey. This is his story.
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Erika Preisig, doctor and president of assisted suicide organisation Lifecircle, has been helping patients, including foreigners, to die.
To what extent do you think assisted suicide should be a legally available option to those who want to end their lives?
Switzerland legalised assisted suicide in the 1940s. More than 1,000 seriously ill or disabled people end their lives with the help of suicide assistants in Switzerland each year.
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