Alejandro Gaviria Uribe


Alejandro Gaviria Uribe is a Colombian economist and Engineer. He is known as the 3rd Minister of Health and Social Protection of Colombia. A former Dean of the School of Economics at the University of the Andes from 2006 to his appointment as Minister in 2012, he has previously served as Deputy Director of the National Planning Department of Colombia, and has worked as Researcher and eventually Deputy Director of the Foundation for the Higher Education and Development, a private non-profit policy research centre based in Bogotá, as well as Researcher for the Inter-American Development Bank. On May 22, 2019, he was named president of the prestigious University of the Andes for a four-year period.

Career

Minister of Health and Social Protection

On 30 August 2012 President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón announced the designation of Gaviria as Minister of Health and Social Protection of Colombia. Gaviria was sworn in on 3 September 2012 succeeding Beatriz Londoño Soto. On 7 August 2018, he was succeeded by the medical doctor and surgeon Juan Pablo Uribe Restrepo under the government of president Iván Duque Márquez.

Personal life

Gaviria was born in 1966 in Santiago, Chile, to Juan Felipe Gaviria Gutiérrez and Cecilia Uribe Flórez. He is married to Carolina Soto Losada, the current High Presidential Counsellor for Government, Private Sector and Competitiveness of Colombia. He has two children, Mariana Gaviria and Tomas Gaviria. On 6 September 2017, it was announced he was being treated for Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Gaviria identifies as an atheist who does not believe in life after death.

Selected works