Professor Jason Leitch has announced he is stepping down as Scotland’s national clinical director at the end of April.
Professor Leitch will also leave his post at NHS Tayside in a decision to “look for new challenges across health and care after a break”.
He shot to prominence during the COVID pandemic, appearing at Holyrood briefings alongside then first minister Nicola Sturgeon on a near-daily basis as well as fronting public information campaigns on TV, radio and online.
Announcing the news on Tuesday, he said: “It has been an enormous privilege to carry out this role and work closely with colleagues across the health and care sector in service of the patients, their families and carers.
“The NHS and social care system does remarkable work every day, and I am immensely proud of the teams I have had the privilege of being part of.
“The ongoing success of the Scottish Patient Safety Programme is globally recognised and has significantly improved the safety and reliability of care in many ways.
“The COVID pandemic was an unprecedented challenge for all countries and I am proud of my colleagues inside and outside government for their incredible work.
“It was a privilege to be able to communicate with the public so directly and be part of that coordinated response, and I will forever be grateful for the public’s attention and willingness to follow the guidance – it saved lives.”
Professor Leitch has worked for the Scottish government since 2007 and was appointed national clinical director in the health and social care directorate in January 2015.
The professor came under the spotlight while the UK COVID-19 Inquiry was sitting in Edinburgh in January.
He refuted a suggestion by Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, that colleagues in a group chat were “keen to try to delete messages which may subsequently be recoverable in a freedom of information request”.
During a WhatsApp exchange, Ken Thomson, the Scottish government’s former…
