Stephanie Nolen in The New York Times:
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.
“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.
More here.
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