By Chelsea Conaboy Globe Staff

The massive Benghazi Medical Center stood empty for decades, a symbol of the corruption that undermined Libya during Moammar Khadafy’s regime, leaving unrealized the dream of making the 1,200-bed hospital a health care hub for the region.

“It was kept like a phantom, a shadow,” said Dr. Laila Bugaighis, an obstetrician-gynecologist, said before a small audience in a Massachusetts General Hospital auditorium Tuesday.

Bugaighis, a polished woman who speaks with the measuredness of someone who has experienced the risk -- and reward -- of being outspoken under a dictator’s rule, is medical director of Benghazi Medical Center, now partially open and expanding its services in post-war Libya. She and several colleagues were in Boston this week, visiting with physicians from Mass. General and crafting plans to make the Benghazi hospital a center of modern health care.

Construction of the hospital began in 1973. Sensing growing dissatisfaction in eastern Libya, Khadafy opened a portion of the sprawling facility in 2009 -- a breakthrough for health care in the region, Bugaighis said.

Now, she said, the hospital and the country’s nascent health care system can play a key role in uniting the Libyan people and giving them a vision for the future.

For years, the people of Libya had little to no access to health care. The rich got their care abroad, and the regular people suffered, she said.

When people see that post-war Libya can provide this basic human right, she said, “people are going to be easily laying down their weapons and continuing to think about how to improve the living for others. ... I think this is the way forward.”