Fourth Minister of Health of Ecuador resigns after being in office for only 19 days

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Ecuadorian Minister of Health, Rodolfo Farfán, resigned this Friday from the post to which he was appointed on March 1st, coinciding with the publication by a local media of some controversial lists of those privileged in the vaccination against Covid-19.

Farfán resigned just 21 days after his predecessor, Juan Carlos Zevallos, also in the midst of criticism for alleged “privileged vaccination”, among them, his mother in a geriatric center.

The General Secretariat of Communication confirmed the minister’s resignation without going into details.

The media La Posta reported this Friday that among the vaccinated relatives are the wife of President Lenin Moreno, Rocio Gonzalez; Defense Minister Oswaldo Jarrin, and Fredy Miño, the official who pushes the president’s wheelchair. Also named were the former President of the Republic Oswaldo Hurtado, the former Minister of Economy Pablo Better and the rector of UDLA Carlos Larreategui, among many others.

For the moment, no official source, nor the mentioned ones, have confirmed these vaccinations, although others have done so a few weeks ago.

Fourth Minister of Moreno

Farfan is the fourth Minister of Health in the Government of Lenín Moreno since he took office in May 2017 – he concludes his term in two months – and the third to resign since the pandemic began in February 2020.

For the moment, the Secretariat of Communication has not offered the reasons wielded by Farfán for his resignation, although a personal letter that alludes to “strict personal reasons” is circulating in networks.

Before him, there were Zevallos, from March 2020 to March 2021; Catalina Andramuño, from July 2019 to March 2020; and Verónica Espinosa, from May 2017 to July 2020.

Espinosa resigned due to public criticism of the drug basket and Andramuño due to lack of budgets to address the pandemic.

For his part, Zevallos resigned and immediately left Ecuadorian territory for the USA, where he resided prior to his appointment, in the midst of a legislative process against him in the National Assembly, which qualified a trial of censure for criticism of his management.

Criticism against him intensified when a list of alleged beneficiaries of the vaccines appeared in which politicians and personalities related to the Government appeared, although the Executive has not accepted the validity of such list.

Also for the slow vaccination process between January and February, a challenge that Farfán assumed.

Investigations in progress

Farfán’s resignation comes two days after a raid by the Attorney General’s Office on the facilities of the Ministry of Health as part of the investigation that links Zevallos with cases of irregular vaccination, that is, of people not contemplated in the criteria of Phases 0 and 1.

“The versions obtained show that there is a detailed record of the people vaccinated, which makes us presume that there is information that has been hidden and that would be useful for the investigation carried out by the Prosecutor’s Office”, advised the agency on Wednesday.

As of this Friday, the first dose of the vaccine had been applied to 121,054 people in Ecuador, in a process that began on January 21.

The government of President Moreno has announced an investment of 200 million dollars in the acquisition of some 20 million doses to vaccinate some 9 million people this year, 60 percent of the population.

Farfán’s resignation joins that of six other ministers and government secretaries so far this year, with only two months left in Moreno’s administration. Since May 24, 2017, more than 90 ministers and national secretaries have passed through the different Executive portfolios.