COLOMBIA

On December 26, Colombian President Ivan Duque announced the resignation of Juan Pablo Uribe from the Ministry of Health. “We talked to Juan Pablo Uribe and agreed to his retirement as head of the portfolio,” explained the president, who temporarily appointed Deputy Public Health Minister  Iván Darío González, to take charge of the Ministry of Health. Uribe had served as minister since August 2018.

Iván Darío González Ortiz is a surgeon with a Master’s degree in Health Administration from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. He has run institutions providing services, insurance and medicine, such as Javesalud and Fundación Santa Fé and has sat on different boards of health organizations, acting as a consultant for the World Bank for health projects in Argentina and El Salvador. He has also taught postgraduate studies at the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogotá.

Duque highlighted a number of milestones achieved during Uribe’s administration, including the Punto Final Agreement, where debts in the health sector were settled, injecting liquidity and improving services nationwide. Another achievement was the Law to Strengthen the Health Superintendency, reviewing those Health Services Provision Institutes (IPS, for their acronym in Spanish) and Health Promotion Entities (EPS, for their acronym in Spanish) providing poor standards of service. Finally, Duque mentioned the Mental Health Policy and the Prevention and Care of the Consumption of Psychoactive Substances as other outstanding measures in Uribe’s legacy.