The crowd was expectant when Tatiana Andia took the microphone: She was a hero to many in the room, the woman who negotiated cheaper drug prices for Colombia. But that day, at a conference for policymakers and academics on the right to health in Latin America, there was a more intimate topic she wanted to discuss.
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“A year ago I was diagnosed with a terminal lung cancer,” she began, “one that’s incurable, catastrophic, all the terrible adjectives.” She gave a small laugh, acknowledging the whole thing sounded preposterous.
The air in the packed conference room went still.
Ms. Andia, 44, a professor and a former official in Colombia’s health ministry, said she was going to speak not as an expert, but from a different perspective, one newly acquired — that of a patient. A particular health rights issue preoccupied her these days, she said: the right to death.
No one, she went on, wants to talk to me about dying.
She began to speak faster and faster, and her hands fluttered around her face like small birds. People in the audience looked at the floor, the ceiling, their laps.
“How come we can’t talk about having a dignified death when we talk about the right to health?” she demanded.