Cardiology professor is Moscow’s latest cancer-patient suicide
After a long battle with cancer, cardiology professor Edmund Michael Lyude killed himself on March 18 by leaping from the window of his seventh-floor apartment building in Moscow. According to police, the 90-year-old scholar left a suicide note saying he was tired of fighting his disease.
The news agency LifeNews reports that Lyude’s friends and relatives say he had been refused admission to a hospital.
Russian Minister of Health Veronika Skvortsova ordered an investigation into what medical care Lyude was receiving.
Yulia Ivanova, the chief spokesperson for the federal Investigative Committee, said an inquiry is underway. “At the scene, officers discovered a suicide note indicating that the victim suffered from a severe illness,” Ivanova said.
In February 2015, there were 11 reported suicides by cancer patients in Moscow.
Moscow Deputy Mayor Leonid Pechatnikov has said the wave of suicides is unrelated to shortages of painkiller medications.
Lyudmila Stebenkova, the head of the Moscow City Council’s healthcare commission, has said there’s no need to take additional measures to assist cancer patients, claiming that Moscow is one of the few regions in Russia where cancer patients receive “adequate care.”