Eye Health Hero: Shamim Khan

Biomedical Engineer to Hospital Manager for sustainability: Shamim Khan has worked with Mazharul Haque BNSB Eye Hospital for over 7 years on sight-saving programmes! He was joined as Biomedical Engineer in 2013 and currently serves as Manager Administration (Admin and Programme) at the hospital. He also takes care of community outreach programs and Vision center programs under different projects.

“I started working with Mazharul Haque BNSB Eye Hospital about 7 years ago and it’s been a tremendous experience for me because I actually have a chance – an opportunity – to give back by achieving 10 years of Volunteered knowledge in community eye care. But also, at the same time, I receive far more than I give. From the professional perspective, I learn so much more because there are a lot of wings in development work that we’d never get in academics that I get to see while on these serving and teaching missions”

-Shamim Khan

Mr. Shamim worked with this Hospital since 2004 as volunteer and community organizer of free community outreach programs like Cataract Surgery programme, pediatric screening programme and School Screening programme. Last 10 years before he joined as staff in the hospital he volunteered on our programme in remote rural areas of Bangladesh.

Despite his busy schedule in Maintenance and Repair works of Medical, Laboratory and IT Equipments of Hospital and Vision Centers, Mr. Khan has found time to joined different community outreach programmes, training programmes and advocacy meetings & Workshops regularly; it follows his journey to becoming a programme manager, his remarkable community experiences and touching patient stories. We want to give a big thank you to Mr. Shamim who will dedicate his time tirelessly to learn from the field for the betterment of hospital programmes to develop as a sustainable institution in the treatment and prevention of avoidable blindness in Bangladesh.

SKILLS & EXPERTISE
Mr. Shamim completed his post Graduation from University of Dhaka after his engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2012. He joined different training and workshops in home and abroad to develop his knowledge in skills in eye care delivery related programs. He also joined Launching programme of WRV in Bangladesh by IAPB recently. In 2018, he joined LAICO to receive training on Eye Care Programme Managers.

TRAINING LOCAL STAFFS
After developing his knowledge on Administrative and communication skills management pleased to place him as Manager Administration from Biomedical Engineer in 2016. After joining in the said post, he contributed a lot in development of hospital activities and quality of service delivery including medical and clinical services for the betterment of patients. When he was released from biomedical engineering post, he trained local ophthalmic paramedics and biomedical technicians of the hospital to continue his duty for 99.99% uptime of medical, IT and electrical equipment for smooth service delivery. Also he organizes capacity building training for programme and hospital staff and regularly organizes monitoring and evaluation programmes to identify the problems and generate solutions for minimizing risk factors for sustainability. By this way, we can ensure quality patient output as well as our local staff are trained on capacity building and long run sustainability.

In an interview, Mr. Khan said about training staff locally: “I’ve been training technicians and programme staff in advocacy and policy development for the past 03 years, and I enjoy teaching very much. However, when I teach colleagues practically by explaining hospital preference, there’s a tremendous advantage in developing skills.”

Thank you Mr. Shamim Khan for your great continuation in delivering quality eye care. Your dedication to the development of hospital activities and sustainability will help communities gain access to life changing treatment for generations to come! We are proud to have you part of our team.