Abdul Sattar Edhi was a man from Pakistan who helped people in need. He started the Edhi Foundation, which has places where sick people can go, houses for poor people, places to help people with mental health problems, and homes for orphans all over Pakistan. He opened a free clinic in Karachi for people who didn’t have much money. He began doing good deeds in 1957 when there was a disease outbreak in Karachi. People gave him money to buy his first ambulance that year.
Edhi worked with his wife, Bilquis Bano Edhi, to make his foundation bigger. They used money that people donated to buy 1,800 ambulances. By the time he died, Edhi had helped take care of about 20,000 children. He is known as the “Angel of Mercy” and is one of the most famous and respected people in Pakistan. In 2013, The Huffington Post said he might be the “world’s greatest living humanitarian.” Edhi didn’t like to be in charge of everything and didn’t always like what religious leaders or politicians did. He wanted people in Pakistan to be kind to each other, no matter what religion they followed. He even helped people in other countries, like Ethiopia and the United States. People thought he should get the Nobel Peace Prize many times.
ABDUL SATTAR EDHI
Born on 28th February 1928
Died on 8th July 2016
Pakistani Humanitarian & Philanthropist
Abdul Sattar Edhi was born on January 1, 1928, in Bantva, Gujarat, British India. His family was Memon. When he was 11 years old, his mother had a stroke and became disabled. She died when he was 19 years old. Taking care of his mother during her sickness made him want to help other sick and mentally ill people. He wanted to create hospitals and centres to help people who were suffering. Even when he was young, he felt responsible for helping people in need, even if he had to beg for it.
In 1947, India was divided, and Edhi and his family moved to Pakistan. They settled in Karachi. Edhi started working in a wholesale market. At first, he was a salesperson, but then he became a commission agent selling fabric. After a few years, he set up a free clinic with the help of his community. He asked people for donations, and they gave him Rs.200,000. The Edhi Trust grew quickly and set up a maternity hospital and ambulance service in Karachi, which has more than 10 million people. As more people trusted the Edhi Trust, they gave more donations.
Edhi saw sick people lying on the street during a flu outbreak in Karachi. He set up chairs and asked medical students to help. He was broke and begged for donations on the street. People gave him money. He bought an 8-by-8 space to start his work.
Abdul Sattar Edhi devoted his life to helping the poor, and in the following six decades, he single-handedly transformed the face of welfare in Pakistan. Edhi established the Edhi Foundation, as well as a welfare trust called the Edhi Trust with an initial amount of five thousand rupees, which was later renamed as Bilquis Edhi Trust. Known as a defender of the poor, he began receiving various donations, which allowed him to expand his services.
Today, the Abdul Sattar Edhi Foundation continues to grow in both scope and capacity and is currently the largest welfare organization in Pakistan. Since its inception, the Edhi Foundation has rescued over 20,000 abandoned infants, rehabilitated more than 50,000 orphans, and trained over 40,000 nurses. It also operates over 330 welfare centres in rural and urban areas of Pakistan, which serve as food kitchens, rehabilitation homes, shelters for abandoned women and children, and centres for the mentally disabled. The Edhi Foundation runs the world’s largest ambulance service, with 1,500 vehicles in operation, and provides 24-hour emergency services. It also manages nursing homes, orphanages, and rehabilitation centres for drug addicts and the mentally ill.
The Edhi Foundation has carried out relief operations in Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus region, Eastern Europe, and the United States, where it provided aid following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. During his ill health, his son Faisal Edhi, wife Bilquis Edhi, and daughter managed the daily operations of the organization. He was referred to as Pakistan’s version of Mother Teresa, and the BBC described him as “Pakistan’s most respected personality and was considered by some to be almost a saint.”
Abdul Sattar Edhi involved himself in every activity at the Edhi Foundation, from raising funds to washing bodies. He always kept an ambulance with him, which he drove himself and made rounds of the city regularly. If he ever found a poor or injured person, he helped them to the Relief Centre, where immediate care and attention were given to the needy. Despite his busy work schedule with the Foundation, Edhi found enough time to spend with the residents of the welfare homes called “Edhi Homes.” He was very fond of playing and laughing with the children.
In the mid-1980s, Edhi was captured by Israeli groups while travelling in Lebanon. In 2006, he was detained in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for 16 hours. In January 2008, US immigration officials detained Edhi at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City for over eight hours and confiscated his passport and other documents. When asked about his frequent detentions, Edhi said, “The only explanation I can think of is my beard and my clothes.”
Amidst rising radicalism in his country, Abdul Sattar Edhi stood out as a symbol of Pakistan’s fading secular tradition, thanks to his extraordinary public welfare organization that spans across the nation. Edhi, who recently passed away at the age of 90, never turned anyone away from his hospitals, homeless shelters, rehabilitation centres, and orphanages.
Despite his enormous fame and the large sums of money that passed through his hands, Abdul Sattar Edhi chose to live a very modest and simple lifestyle. He and his family lived in a two-room apartment adjacent to the Foundation’s headquarters. He avoided publicity or advertising due to his aversion to pride. As his credibility and reputation grew and the Edhi name became a household name, people started inviting him to special events as a chief guest. In a 1991 interview with a reporter in Lahore, Edhi said, “I would like to request the public not to invite me to social gatherings and opening ceremonies. This only wastes my time, which is solely devoted to the welfare of our people.”
Abdul Sattar Edhi, despite his traditional Islamic upbringing, held a progressive and inclusive perspective on complex social issues. He strongly advocated for women’s empowerment and equality. Out of the 2,000 salaried employees at the Edhi Foundation, about 500 are women, and several female volunteers assist in fundraising efforts. Edhi encouraged women to pursue all kinds of work without discrimination.
Abdul Sattar Edhi tied the knot with Bilquis in 1965, who was a nurse working at the Edhi clinic. They were blessed with four children – two sons, Faisal Edhi and Kutub Edhi, and two daughters, Almas Edhi and Kubra Edhi. Bilquis oversees the free maternity services at the clinic in Karachi and manages the admission of abandoned and orphaned children. Both Abdul Sattar Edhi and Bilquis shared a vision of selfless devotion to the cause of alleviating human suffering and a sense of personal responsibility to respond to individual calls for help, regardless of race, religion, or status.
Bilquis Edhi was born in Bantva, a city in western India (now located in the State of Gujarat). As a youngster, she disliked school and instead joined a dispensary as a nurse in 1965. At that time, the Edhi home was located in the Mithadar area of the old city of Karachi, where it had been established in 1951.
On June 25, 2013, Abdul Sattar Edhi’s kidneys stopped working, and it was announced that he would require dialysis for the rest of his life unless he found a kidney donor. Sadly, on July 8, 2016, at the age of 88, he passed away due to kidney failure, after being put on a ventilator. In his last wishes, he requested that his organs be donated, but due to his deteriorating health, only his corneas were suitable. He was buried at the Edhi Village in Karachi.
Abdul Sattar Edhi was honoured with the Shield of Honor by the Pakistan Army in recognition of his efforts towards social welfare in Rawalpindi. This award is a rare honour bestowed upon very few individuals by the Pak Army. In 1989, the Government of Pakistan awarded him the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, a civil decoration. Additionally, the Pakistan Academy of Medical Sciences granted him the Khidmat Award, and the Pakistan Human Rights Society presented him with the Human Rights Award. In April 1998, The Jinnah Society awarded him the Jinnah Award for Outstanding Services to Pakistan, making him the first recipient of this award in Pakistan. In 2011, the Prime Minister of Pakistan recommended Edhi for the Nobel Peace Prize. Later, in mid-2016, a petition was submitted by Ziauddin Yousafzai, the father of Malala Yousafzai, requesting a Nobel Peace Prize for Edhi. In her message of condolence on Edhi’s passing, broadcast by BBC Urdu Service, Malala quoted, “As a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, I have the right to nominate people for the prize, and I have nominated Abdul Sattar Edhi.”
Quotes of Abdul Sattar Edhi
- “My religion is humanitarianism, which is the basis of every religion in the world.”
- “I do not have any formal education. What use is education when we do not become human beings? My school is the welfare of humanity.”
- “Never take anyone’s death to heart Bilquis. Remember God by the equality with which He implements it. Nobody is different, the richest to the poorest, from here to the end of the globe face it equally. What an example of equality.”
- “So, many years later there were many who still complained and questioned, ‘Why must you pick up Christians and Hindus in your ambulance?’ And I was saying, ‘Because the ambulance is more Muslim than you’.”
- “Empty words and long praises do not impress God. Show Him your faith by your deeds.”
- “Chasing after desires creates inner turmoil. When the devil becomes a guide, dacoits and gangsters are manufactured. He makes men fight against their souls to survive expensive items and most lose everything in the face of his strength. The internal enemy can only be overcome by a personal revolution.”
- “The dead has only one place to go… up. Wherever you bury them, they will go the same way, up.”
- “The Holy Book should open in your souls, not on your laps. Open your heart and see God’s people. In their plight, you will find Him.”
- “Those who believed in changing the world were either hungry by circumstance or practised deprivation by choice.”
- “Appearance is a distraction, surrendering it develops truth and humility in abundance.”
