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Minister denies bid to oust GPO chief
THE NATION


Pradit

Move against Witit political: doctors group

BANGKOK: -- Public Health Minister Pradit Sinthawanarong yesterday said he was not behind a campaign to oust Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) director Witit Artavatkun, adding that there had been no progress on the GPO's bird-flu vaccine factory in Saraburi for years.

A GPO board meeting will be hosted on May 17 and there was a rumour Witit would be removed from office.

Pradit said the ministry had provided all information to the Department of Special Investi-gation (DSI), while the GPO-assigned committee also internally probed it. He said the vaccine factory project would go on with participation from the National Vaccine Institute and experts to ensure it proceeded according to the proper medical theory and project management.

Asked if the ministry had motives for submitting the Witit case to the DSI, Pradit said if he wanted to change the GPO director as some speculated, he wouldn't get other agencies such as the DSI involved. Any allegations, he warned, should be based on facts.

He insisted that there was no hidden agenda and wanted the public to see the facts for themselves. Asked if there would be any negative impact on the vaccine factory project if Witit were ousted, Pradit said there would not be. Construction on the project hadn't progressed very far.

Meanwhile, Rural Doctors Society chairman Kriengsak Watcharanukulkiat alleged the attempt to oust Witit was political. He said Witit had blocked some unnamed figure's attempt to mobilise Bt75 million out of the Bt91-million budget in the fiscal year 2012 for public sector activities into the Office of Permanent Secretary for Public Health.

He said the society had witnesses and documents to back this claim if a fact-finding probe committee would be set up with participation of outsiders whom Thai society trusted.

Kriengsak said the society would also join the state enterprise unions, national health security supporters and a patients' network to ask PM Yingluck Shinawatra on June 6 to cancel the payment-for-performance (P4P) method for rural doctors' allowance payments, and to oust Pradit from his post.

In related news, Pradit's deputy Cholnan Srikaew said the ministry aimed to spend Bt500 million to provide 3.5 million doses of flu shots this year to reduce complications and deaths among at-risk people. They included the elderly over 65, those with chronic illness, pregnant women and infants aged six months to two years. The flu shots would also be given to medical staff, especially those dealing with poultry.

The vaccine would be issued from May 27-September 30 at hospitals under the National Health Security system, he added. Each year Thailand had 900,000 flu patients, about 3 per cent (26,000 patients) had later developed serious complications such as pneumonia until they became hospitalised.

About 150 flu patients with serious complications died each year, he said, the epidemic causing Bt913 million to Bt2.4 billion in economic damage. The flu shots however couldn't prevent bird flu, either new or old strains, he warned. This year from January 1 to May 1, there had been 18,005 flu patients but no death reported yet.


-- The Nation 2013-05-16

[SOTIRIOS]

.....oh-oh........another opportunity to charge the Thai people billions........

.....these scoundrels will never stop...........

(..........get back someone's billions.......and then their commissions.....)