Reprinted from BBC News

More than one in ten deaths in Belgium is due to euthanasia or drugs given by doctors to hasten death, experts believe.

A survey of deaths registered during the first four months of 1998 revealed that thousands of deaths result from administration of lethal drugs "without the explicit request of the patient", despite the fact that euthanasia is illegal in Belgium.

Researchers from the Free University Brussels and Ghent University sent questionnaires to doctors who signed the death certificates and they received sufficient responses to allow them to consider 1,925 deaths in detail.

• They concluded that 705 deaths a year (1.3% of the total) could be attributed directly to euthanasia or "physician-assisted suicide".

• In as many as 3.2% of cases - 1,796 deaths - lethal drugs had been given without the request of the patient.

• And in 5.8% of cases - 3,261 deaths - treatment had been withheld with the express intention of ending the patient's life.

Additionally, some deaths could be attributed indirectly to the actions of medical staff, such as:

• Doses of opiod pain-killers like morphine, which can shorten life, had been given before deaths in almost 20% of cases.

• In 16.4% of cases overall doctors had made a decision not to carry out further treatment.

The number of deaths which followed an "end of life decision" (ELD) was similar to that found in Holland, where euthanasia has not been a criminal offence since 1994.

The researchers also concluded that the "rate of administration of lethal drugs to patients without their explicit request is similar to Australia" - where the first act of legal euthansia by administering a lethal injection was carried out in 1996.