Giant Screen At Woolwich Town Centre Draws Attention To The Issue of Assisted Dying

by Benson Agoha | Woolwich

It has been the talk on every body's lips for some time and news has been made about people who have traveled abroad to end their lives since they are allowed to do so back home.

* A Giant Screen similar to this one has been in Woolwich
Town Centre, for the past three days.

 But as the issue of assisted dying will soon be the subject of an intense debate at the commons, it rises to the surface more glaringly this time.

The main question has been whether it right for anyone to help anybody to end it all. Doctors are usually contracted by hospitals to save lives, not end them and so when a patient lies close to death, doctors often refuse relatives' request to end it for him/her.

Woolwich Town Centre has been the host of a truck-mounted Giant Screen for the past three days. But although switched on, the screen shows only two separate lamp boxes that barely move.

For three days, passersby have had to watch the screen arrive, stationed on a carrier vehicle outside the Equitable House. It shows the two images that barely move. Patients with terminal diseases like strokes and paralyses lie down and just wait there - for everything and everyone.

Often sitting in the vehicle idling away too is the driver of the truck who is glad to end his own still experience at 3pm.

We asked him what it was all about. He explains that the screen seeks to draw attention to the issue of assisted dying. The plight of terminally ill patients and people with stroke, who may be paralyzed from their elbow downwards, but perhaps desire to end it all rather than live like that.

"What should the doctor do in such circumstance?" he asked, adding "Should assisted dying be legalized so that doctors can end it for desirous patients once their relatives have agreed?"

But before the MP's debate on it, a popular magazine, he says, is preparing to make the issue, their cover page this week.

I remind him that the issue might be contentious, especially with Christians being averse to such suggestions. I tell him of accounts given as testimonies in Christian churches, some of who say their miracles occurred after Doctors had written their situation off.

"But it's all a matter of belief" he argues. I agree with him that belief is a major issue for such miracles.

The issue may well be a hot topic in the commons especially as MPs come from diverse backgrounds.  Let's just hope that the Christian MPs will carry the day.