Tatiana Andia

Tatiana Andia was a 45-year-old sociologist, economist, and researcher—a professor at the Universidad de los Andes—recognized for her work on pharmaceutical price regulation and social justice in healthcare. In 2023, she publicly announced that she had metastatic lung cancer and that treatment would only prolong her life rather than cure her. Through several opinion columns in the newspaper "El Espectador", she shared what it was like to cope with the illness and sought to educate the public about the process of dying.

Tatiana decided to take control of the treatments offered to her, choosing not to undergo procedures that would prolong her suffering and deciding how her life would end. In February 2025, she wrote her final op-ed, "The Party’s Over" (Se acabó la fiesta), on the morning before she died. It was read by thousands.

"The party is over, precisely because it stopped being a party and turned into an ordeal. And I don't have to prove to anyone how much I am suffering. There is no need for people to see that, even in my decline, I’m still holding the ball. Simply put, the party is over. They’ve turned off the music. I am bowing out with dignity," she shared.

No details regarding the circumstances of her death were released, other than the fact that she "died on her own terms." Months later, in August 2025, a New York Times report revealed Tatiana's story and the fact that she had chosen euthanasia. Tatiana was intimately familiar with the healthcare system's complex bureaucracy; as a patient, she had to navigate numerous obstacles to access assisted dying and exercise her right to a dignified death.