Brussels:

AN elderly married couple are planning to die together by assisted suicide — even though neither is terminally ill.

The husband and wife, who will be the world’s first couple to be helped to end their life, fear loneliness if the other dies first from natural causes.

They have the support of their three children, who say they would be unable to care for either parent if they became widowed — and have even tracked down a practitioner by justifying it on the grounds of mental anguish.

Identified only as Francis, 89, and 86-year-old Anne, the Belgian couple had originally planned to commit suicide by overdosing on pills on February 3 next year, their 64th wedding anniversary.

A doctor will now help them die in an unnamed hospital in Belgium — where the practice has been legal since 2002. “We want to go together because we both fear the future,” said Francis.

The couple, from Brussels, are receiving regular care for serious health problems — but are reluctant to go into care and fear a retirement home would be out of financial reach.

Francis told Belgian online news service Moustique they opted for euthanasia because they were too scared to “jump from the 20th floor”.

He added: “It takes courage to hang, it takes courage to jump into the canal. But a doctor who makes you a shot and lets you gently fall asleep? It does not take courage.”

This month, Belgian rapist and murderer Frank Van Den Bleeken became the first prisoner to successfully argue for the right to die.

But it has received criticism in the UK, where Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill reaches the Lords in November. Anti-euthanasia group Not Dead Yet UK said death in Belgium was now regarded “as lightly as stepping off a bus”.