Civil society in Thailand’s southern provinces is demanding justice for Dr Supat Hasuwannakit, president of the Rural Doctor Society, who was dismissed from government service recently for alleged corruption in the procurement of COVID-19 test kits in 2019.
In a statement issued today, civil society groups claim that Dr. Supat has been at the forefront in the battle against corruption in the Public Health Ministry and has always stood up to corrupt senior health officials, who have allegedly been working hand-in-glove with unscrupulous pharmaceutical firms to plunder the ministry’s budget for drug procurements.
They have demanded the immediate transfer of the current public health permanent secretary and full disclosure of the details of the probe against Dr. Supat.
Dr. Supat, also director of Sabayoi District Hospital in Songkhla, said that he had been placed under intensive disciplinary investigation by more than 10 committees over the past three years and was unfairly transferred from a hospital in Jana district to Sabayoi.
He claims that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, several hospitals had volunteered to conduct COVID tests using antigen test kits.
The Public Health Ministry could not, at the time however, provide the test kits, so the Jana District Hospital, under his directorship, decided to procure them using hospital funds.
He claimed that the volunteer hospitals had tested 192,905 people, of whom 22,451 were found to be infected and were provided with anti-viral medication.
He also claimed that he had given full details of the procurement project to all the disciplinary committees, but they decided to dismiss him anyway.
