{"id":208834,"date":"2019-08-19T16:38:09","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T21:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=208834"},"modified":"2019-08-19T16:38:09","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T21:38:09","slug":"canadian-man-assisted-suicide-struggling-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/canadian-man-assisted-suicide-struggling-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian man commits assisted suicide after struggling to afford care"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC)\u00a0reports<\/a> that a man in British Columbia has ended his life by assisted suicide after years of struggling to secure the 24-hour care his condition required. Sean Tagert, 41, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2013. After suffering cardiac arrest in 2017, he was resuscitated and required a ventilator. He leaves behind an 11-year-old son, Aidan.<\/p>\n

Tagert and his family set up his home to allow him to stay there and spend weekends with his son. Tagert had shared custody of his son with Aidan\u2019s mother and refused to move to an institutional care setting because his son would not be able to stay with him. He told the CBC in an interview last year<\/a>, “My boy is everything to me. I wouldn’t still be here if it weren’t for him.”<\/p>\n

Because Tagert refused to move to an institutional care facility, he had to piece together the 24-hour care his condition required with Vancouver Coastal Health only providing 20 hours after Tagert lobbied for more care. While struggling to live with ALS, Tagert had to use all of his personal savings to pay an additional $263.50 per day to receive adequate care at home.<\/p>\n

In April, Tagert was featured in a local news video regarding the fight for the health care needs of those with disabilities in Canada:<\/p>\n