This year marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Héctor Abad Gómez. As a good public health worker, he believed that children should be vaccinated, adults should adopt hygiene measures, food should be improved and people should not kill each other fighting. In short, he fought against the two epidemics that kill most people: poverty and war.

If we want to overcome the post-truth era and escape the the polarization that threatens us, Colombia needs a solid but informed public debate; a debate with vigor but without lies, falsehoods or unjust attacks like the one I was subjected to last week by the ex Inspector General Alejandro Ordóñez.

In Colombia, only 18 euthanasias have been practiced in two years of regulation. In Canada, however, in just six months of an equivalent standard, more than 800 euthanasias have been performed. A society must be judged not by how it treats the most powerful, but those who are in the weakest conditions.