Most enquiries to the newer providers of Assisted Voluntary Dying (AVD) in Switzerland are from people who want to come in the very near future. This is in striking contrast to the position only a decade ago.
In 2016 there were only two organisations in Switzerland that offered AVD services to people who were not Swiss citizens. The first was Dignitas which had been founded in 1998 and the second was Lifecircle, founded in 2011. Both worked on a similar model. You had to join as a member and, usually much later, when your membership had been established you could apply for an AVD. Most people who joined never sought to apply for an AVD. Of those who did, and received the necessary “green light”, many never proceeded to book an actual AVD date.
That remains the situation today. Dignitas, for example has over 15,000 members but only handles around 300 AVDs per year. Most of those 15,000 have joined because they are seeking the assurance that an AVD opportunity could be available to them if ever they want to take control of their own lives at some point in the future. Many, of course, simply also want to support the campaigning work that Dignitas does.
Newer arrivals, however, particularly Athanasios and Phoenix Care, are often working on a much more immediate timescale. At Phoenix Care, for example, you have to pay a joining fee of 100 Swiss Francs and then an annual membership fee of 50 Swiss Francs, after which they are happy to provide a relatively lengthy phone call when the particular circumstances of your own case can be discussed. Following that call, they will give a rapid opinion as to whether or not you would pass through the necessary procedures for an AVD. If your subsequent AVD application does not succeed then, such is the confidence of Phoenix in their own initial assessment, no further charge is made.
In other words, membership of Dignitas has always been seen as a form of longer-term assurance. Membership of Phoenix Care is much closer to being an answer to an immediate problem now. The difference is possibly related to the large increase in interest from the USA in the past two years. It may also reflect the contrast between historic Swiss attitudes to life and others where forward planning has been less endemic.
