President-elect Abelardo De la Espriella appointed Ana María Vesga as the new Minister of Health.
“The health of Colombians cannot wait any longer. For too long, millions of families have suffered the consequences of a system in crisis. That reality is beginning to change. Today I welcome Ana María Vesga as Minister of Health of the Miracle Homeland,” Abelardo De la Espriella detailed on his social media.
He added: “Her task will be to lead a shock plan to guarantee timely care, supply of medicines, stability for health human talent and the financial sanitation of the sector, while we build a more efficient, transparent, supportive, and strengthened model in the regions.”
Ana María Vesga is a Colombian lawyer from the University of the Andes, an institution where she also studied Senior Management and Strategic Leadership. She is currently the executive president of Acemi, the guild that groups the main EPS of the contributory regime, from where she has become one of the main interlocutors on the health system crisis, the financing of the model, and proposals for its strengthening.
Before entering the health sector, she developed much of her career in the oil and mining industry. She was executive vice president and Business Development of Integral de Servicios Técnicos, general manager of Latco Drilling, and senior lawyer specialized in Oil & Gas at the firm Cárdenas & Cárdenas.
In 2018, she was appointed executive director of the Pharmaceutical Industry Chamber of the National Business Association of Colombia (ANDI). At that time, the organization highlighted her experience in business strategy, business development, planning, and project management. She remained at ANDI for nearly six years, where she also took leadership of the Health Vice Presidency, consolidating herself as one of the main representatives of the business sector related to medical care and the pharmaceutical industry.
She later became the executive president of Acemi, the guild representing the EPS of the contributory regime.
Although today her name is closely linked to the health sector, her professional career began in the hydrocarbons industry. According to her LinkedIn profile, she worked for 15 years in that sector before making a professional shift that led her to the health field, where she has held important guild positions in Colombia and Latin America in recent years.
“I believe health systems are ecosystems in permanent evolution. That you learn and unlearn. That there is no perfect formula. The important thing is to work for patients, generate well-being for the population, and creatively seek how to ensure more and better health with always limited resources,” she states in her professional profile, where she also notes that she is convinced of the strengths of the Colombian system and the need to work for its strengthening.
In recent years, Ana María Vesga has become one of the most visible figures in the debate about the future of the Colombian health system. In an interview granted to EL TIEMPO in May 2026, amid the problems the sector faces, she stated that Colombia faces “a care crisis, a financial crisis, and a trust crisis,” reflected in more than two million complaints registered during the last year, the increase in legal protections, and the growing difficulties patients face in accessing medical appointments, surgeries, and medicines.
According to her explanation, much of the deterioration is due to accumulated underfunding over several years and that, during the current government, “political discussion prevailed over management and technical decisions.”
From Acemi, she has defended that the priority should be to stabilize the system before promoting a structural reform. Among the main proposals she has put forward are the creation of a “health command post,” a strategy to prioritize care for patients with cancer, orphan diseases, chronic diseases, children, and pregnant women.
“The government must address the situation. There is a crisis that all campaigns have recognized. It is urgently necessary to alleviate the suffering of patients and their families. That means having the state’s capacities, financial and management, to prioritize what is urgent. We have called it the ‘tip-of-the-pyramid’ strategy, which is the basis of a ‘health command post.’ There must be resolving capacity there so that, between insurers and providers, they execute care for the population that cannot wait: patients with cancer, chronic diseases, orphan diseases, maternal, children,” she said in an interview with EL TIEMPO.
She has also insisted on the need to retroactively adjust the value of the Capitation Payment Unit (UPC) according to inflation and to pay the pending resources of the maximum budgets, a debt that, according to Acemi, exceeds 11 trillion pesos between both concepts.
Vesga maintains that the system must move towards greater spending efficiency, strengthen prevention, improve care in the territories, and accelerate the digital transformation of the sector.
Another topic on which she has taken a critical stance is the intervention of several EPS by the Government. According to Vesga, the interventions have not solved the care problems nor the financial situation of the entities. She even stated that, after the intervention measures, the equity of the affected EPS deteriorated by more than 320% and their liabilities increased by 163%, figures that, in her opinion, reflect the deterioration of care for millions of users.
Although she recognizes that some EPS already had problems before being intervened, she considers that underfunding and subsequent administrative decisions significantly worsened the situation.
“In that, the government (of Gustavo Petro) failed and exposed 24 million Colombians to an unprecedented care crisis. The second thing is that the government has ignored the multiple calls from the Constitutional Court to properly finance the UPC and that results in the judicial rulings we have seen that ordered the revocation of the interventions on Sanitas, Coosalud, and Savia Salud,” she commented.
On the other hand, what she says about the financing of the health system is that about 9.57 trillion pesos more are needed to guarantee the proper functioning of the model. Vesga has explained that part of these resources could come from higher system revenues, while the rest would require a greater fiscal effort from the State.
She has also defended measures such as eliminating the maximum contribution limit of 25 minimum wages so that people with higher incomes contribute more to the system, as well as strengthening mechanisms to combat evasion and reviewing the permanence in the subsidized regime of people with payment capacity.
Among the most debated initiatives presented by Acemi is incorporating teachers affiliated to the National Fund for Teachers’ Social Benefits (Fomag) into the General System of Social Security in Health. According to Vesga, this measure would improve care for teachers, who, she states, have repeatedly denounced the deterioration of the service, as well as bring new resources to the general health system.
“With this change, additional resources of $4.85 trillion would be injected into the general health system. The care of this population group would cost, adjusted by age ranges, about $2.03 trillion, so we would be talking about new resources for the health system close to $2.77 trillion. But above all, we would be alleviating the poor care that this population currently receives,” she says in the interview.
Throughout her public interventions, Ana María Vesga has insisted that the debate about health in Colombia has become excessively ideological and considers that decisions must be backed by scientific evidence, as well as technical criteria, and has defended the permanence of the insurance model, although with adjustments to make it more efficient, sustainable, and equitable.
She has also proposed that the country must face a discussion she considers inevitable: defining what services and technologies a system with limited resources can finance. In her opinion, no health system in the world can cover unlimited benefits with a finite budget, so Colombia will have to move towards a discussion about priorities, sustainability, and efficient use of public resources.