LARKANA, Dec 17: Dr Rahim Bakhsh Bhatti, a workaholic with a vision, who humbly calls himself son of a peasant has single-handedly turned the Gambat Institute of Medical Sciences into a state-of-the-art healthcare organisation in the public sector and that too in a remote area.

The institute keeps expanding at an astonishing pace and maintains the highest standards of administrative and financial transparency, an unparalleled feat in a country plagued with corruption at all levels.

“I am a son of simple peasant but I have so far managed to survive against all odds. Lofty vision and dedication are my driving forces which have catapulted me to this position,” said Dr Bhatti, director of the GIMS, while talking to Dawn on Monday.

Asked it must require massive amounts of funds to run such a huge facility, the director did not repeat the mantra of ‘lack of funds’ often on the lips of government functionaries but said the funds provided by the Sindh government were more than enough.

Besides, the institute received budget allocations under the federal and provincial Public Sector Development Programme, he added.

Still it was difficult to fathom how he managed to run the institute undisturbed for years, keep expanding facilities and maintain transparency when everybody in the government were after money.

The doctor replied that he had built such a reputation over the years that “they (rulers) know him well and not like to disturb him,” he said, adding honesty and commitment helped keep the wheel moving.

Asked how he managed to maintain transparency, Dr Bhatti said that government audit, audit by chartered accountant and a third party audit system were regular exercises at the institute, which had earned him and the institute people’s trust and donor agencies’ confidence. Besides, everything was computerised, he said.

The institute had hired services of a security agency to provide security to paramedics and doctors who ran the institute, said Dr Bhatti. Everything worked under an efficient system and patients and their attendants had easy access to the heads of the departments and the director of GIMS, he said.

“On an average, 2,000 patient reports at outpatient departments of all units who get medicines free of charge,” he said.

A study conducted by the USAID Technical Assistance Unit for Health in April 2012 ranked the GIMS number two in the province with best healthcare system, said Dr Bhatti.

He said the GIMS had recently signed memorandums of understanding for providing training and faculty with Aga Khan University, SIUT Karachi, JPMC Karachi, Shah Abdul Latif University and Queens Mary Hospital, UK.

Two big projects of cardiac surgery unit and kidney transplantation will start work within days. The cardiac surgery unit on the other side of the road had been connected with the rest of the facilities with an overhead bridge so that doctors and staff could have an easy access to the unit, he said.

“The unit has modern computer operated ‘tube’ and sterilised ‘capsule’ to send medicines up and bring down to its intended destination. It will minimise the risk of contamination. There are separate lifts for patients and doctors,” he said.

Cardiologist Dr Jawed Akbar Siyal who was posted at SBBMU and visited GIMS on a regular basis said the equipment at the OT were the latest and it had a standby uninterrupted power supply through dry barriers.

Abdul Sattar Abro, a primary teacher of Dakhan town (Shikarpur), who was the first patient to undergo a bypass surgery at the unit, said that he did not have to pay even a paisa for the quality treatment he had received at the unit.

In the dialysis unit, a young woman who had come from Jhal Magsi was undergoing dialysis. She said that she had just spent Rs2,000 only on accommodation and food and nothing else. Dr Bhatti said the institute had made a long journey from a dispensary established in 1934, which was raised to the status of a taluka hospital in 1981 with 28 beds. In 1989, the World Bank up-graded it and declared it a model hospital when he served as its medical superintendent, he said.

The Sindh Assembly passed a bill to establish the GIMS in November 2006.

The institute was established by reconstituting and re-organisng the taluka hospital Gambat, rural health centre Agra, reproductive health service centre Gambat and all basic health units of Gambat taluka, he said.

The institute provides free of cost state-of-the-art healthcare facilities to the poor patients who could not afford highly expensive treatment at private hospitals.

It is fully computerised and all its departments are interconnected. It was the only healthcare organisation in public sector which had its own oxygen generation plant and supplied free of cost oxygen to recently established unit of the Sindh Institute of Urology in Sukkur, said Dr Bhatti.

The institute has an automated laundry system, a big dialysis centre, a computerised pathological laboratory, six-bed intensive care unit and maternal ICU, blood transfusion centre, thalassaemia centre, neonatal care centre, ENT uUnit, tuberculosis hospital, mother-child healthcare centre, coronary care unit, lithotripsy unit, telemedicine centre, eye hospital (courtesy Layton-Rahmatulla Benevolent Trust), 20-bed child health centre with 14-bed ultrasound rooms, eight-bed trauma centre, minimal invasive surgery unit and radiological unit with digital X-ray facility (CT Scan and MRI).

About his future plans, Dr Bhatti said that big double-storey building was in its final stage just across the National Highway on a piece of 60-acre land the institute had just purchased to launch an independent degree awarding institute. “We plan to admit the first batch of 100 students for MBBS courses in 2013,” said Dr Bhatti.

A new trauma centre with 50-bed was being constructed adjacent to the degree awarding institute and would be ready by January 2013 while a hostel and 300-bed hospital would be completed within two years, he said.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah had approved an amendment to the GIMS Act to make the institute an independent degree-awarding institute, he said.

The GIMS is currently a constituent unit of SBBMU, Larkana.