Abul Kalam Azad quits as DG of health services amid COVID-19 scandals

Abul Kalam Azad has resigned as the chief of the Directorate General of Health Services, a key agency in the fight against the pandemic, amid a series of scams related to COVID-19 tests.

The director general of health services submitted the resignation letter to the public administration ministry on Tuesday, Health Secretary Abdul Mannan told bdnews24.com.

Public Administration Secretary Shaikh Yusuf Harun told bdnews24.com at night that he was at office until 5pm but did not receive the resignation letter.

Azad might have sent the letter in an envelope marked confidential after 5pm, Harun said. They will forward it to President Md Abdul Hamid once it is with them.  “His contract will be terminated when we get the approval from there [Bangabhaban],” he said.

Azad has been facing intense criticism since March, when COVID-19 struck Bangladesh and gave rise to the scandals in the health sector.  

It began with the ordinary surgical masks passed as N95, a type of respirator that is crucial for health workers in the fight against COVID-19, at government hospitals.    

When the fake coronavirus test scams involving Regent Hospital and JKG Health Care started to come out, a spat between the DGHS and the health ministry sprung out in the open as well.

As the directorate said it had signed the deal with Regent for the treatment of COVID-19 patients on orders from health ministry “high-ups”, the ministry sought his explanation, asking him who the “high-ups” were. In reply, Azad named former health secretary Ashadul Islam.      

Azad himself was infected with the novel coronavirus and was in hospital care in May before recovery.

In his first appearance in the daily COVID-19 press briefing after the recovery, he stirred a debate saying coronavirus infection could persist for another “two to three years”.

He apologised the following day. The script that he was reading from in the online briefing had been "hastily prepared" and as such, he "couldn't carefully review its contents before going public", Azad said.

He clarified that the coronavirus will exist in countries until a successful vaccine is developed and successfully applied to a sufficient number of people, which may take two to three years or even more.

Prior to his appointment as director general in 2016, Azad was the additional director general for planning and then administration at the DGHS. He had also worked as the director of the directorate’s Management Information Department.

The government had extended his appointment on contract until April next year when his tenure had ended.

Hailing from Nilphamari, he received an MBBS degree from Dhaka Medical College in 1983 and MPhil from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University in 1990. He became a professor in 2001.