The Legal Assistance program in Colombia

Factor-H offers a free-of-charge legal assistance service in Colombia, with the sole objective of facilitating access to the services, medicines and supplies that the Colombian State ensures to all patients affected by Huntington’s disease. Factor-H aims to assist all HD families with navigating the complex landscape of accessing medical benefits & medications, which often can be difficult to obtain from insurance companies.

In 2022, Factor-H hired Brayan Hernández to manage this program and to represent the needs of the patients and their families. Brayan has been very successful in ensuring that patients get the medications they need, as well as ensuring that late-stage patients get adequate care, whenever possible.

The Legal Assistance program for families affected by Huntington’s disease is part of the comprehensive assistance offered by Factor-H from its strategic Advocacy (“Incidencia”) pillar. The assistance aims to address the concerns and problems presented by the population of interest at the time of accessing institutional services to guarantee their rights.

Recently, in September 2024, Factor-H entered into a strategic alliance with ISILegal, a Colombian startup dedicated to creating paths to health equity. They, like Factor-H, are committed to the defense, access to health and justice as a social work for patients with rare diseases.

Our collaboration seeks to reach more families in Colombia who experience barriers and challenges when interacting with the health system, therefore, ISILegal comes to support us in the presentation of “tutela actions” when it is pertinent and necessary to obtain services and treatments that allow our families to live in better conditions.

All families can access this service completely free of charge through us, they can contact us at asesoriajuridica@factor-h.org and brayan@factor-h.org or through our social agents in Colombia.

Please understand your rights and we will work together so that all affected people have access to an adequate level of care and the support they are guaranteed by law in Colombia.

How the program works

Our legal program is aimed at families affected by Huntington’s disease, patients, at-risk family members, carers and members of the nuclear family.

Our attorney Brayan Hernández is available to advise all Colombian families who have doubts or questions about their rights and ensure that the Colombian health system provides the sick and caregivers with the assistance that they are entitled to by law.

The legal assistance offered by the program is merely indicative. Factor-H and the personnel in charge of providing the assistance have no responsibility in relation to the outcome of the processes and actions that may be initiated.

Specific objectives

1. Provide free legal assistance to families affected by Huntington’s disease, patients, at-risk family members, caregivers, and household members, within a framework of respect, dignity and equality.

2. Influence the institutional framework to reduce administrative gaps that limit access to rights of the population of interest.

As part of this program, Brayan Hernández holds regular virtual and in-person meetings with HD affected families, to educate them about their rights and to provide them with a framework to claim what belongs to them by law in Colombia. He has also represented Factor-H at international meetings of the rare disease community, which have taken place in Colombia, working closely with the nonprofit organization Federation of Rare Diseases of Colombia (Fecoer).

Some numbers from 2023

In 2023, Factor-H postulated 4 actions to protect the rights of individuals with HD, 1 application for immigration from a Venezuelan HD family who had arrived in Barranquilla, 5 instances of right of petition, to ensure access to medication and to cover the costs of transport to medical centers, 8 legal complaints after insurance companies stopped providing medications to patients, and 1 incident of contempt, a final resource to the judge, to achieve compliance with the judicial decision.

Watch a recent virtual presentation on the health legal aid program below (in Spanish). You can access a description of the slides shown below as a PDF as well (also in Spanish). 

Recent virtual event in Colombia with HD families, where Brayan Hernández explains our legal program


PDF describing the principles of the Legal Assistance program in Colombia

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