Bilquis Edhi

Biography

Bilques Edhi was born in the city of Bantva which is now in the State of Gujarat in western India. When she was a teenager she was not enjoying school and managed to join a small expanding dispensary as a nurse in 1965. At the time the Edhi home was in the old city area of Karachi known as Mithadar where it had been founded in 1951. The small number of Christian and Hindu nurses who worked there had just reduced in number. The founder, Abdul Sattar Edhi, recruited a number of nurses including Bilquis who, unusually, was from a Muslim background.

Her future husband proposed to her after recognizing her talents and allowing her to lead the small nursing department. He had recognized her enthusiasm and interest during her six-month training program where she had learnt basic midwifery and healthcare. They were married when she was seventeen and her husband was nearly twenty years older. Their honeymoon was unusual in that the newlyweds discovered a young girl with head injuries at their dispensary just after their wedding ceremony. Edhi said in 1989 that she did not regret the time lost in consoling the twelve year old's concerned relatives or supervising blood transfusions as now "... that girl is married with children; that's what is really important." The Edhi Foundation's unofficial website uses the line "Making a difference and changing lives forever".

Edhi took over the management of the jhoolas project, the first of which had been built by her husband in 1952. These 300 cradles are available throughout Pakistan where parents can abandon unwanted children or those that cannot be raised. They carry the message “Do not kill, leave the baby to live in the cradle” in English and Urdu. A small minority of abandoned children are disabled but over 90% are female. This alternative is thought to have reduced the number of dead babies who are killed by their own parents given the alternative provided by the Edhi Foundation to leave the unwanted babies in the cradles. The Edhi project is also responsible for burying dead babies found by the police. The Edhi Foundation is known all around the world and is the biggest emergency service in Pakistan.

The couple have four children who are involved with the Edhi Foundation and the management of the Edhi village, the fleet of ambulances, the mental home, the schools and the offices in Pakistan and London.

Recognition

Edhi and her husband have received a number of awards in recognition of their work. In July 2007 they were publicly recognised for their work by President Pervez Musharraf who made a contribution of 100,000 rupees (from his own pocket) and he particularly noted that their work provided social services to the poor of Pakistan without any discrimination. This contribution contrasts sharply with another offered by President Zia ul-Haq which was turned down because of the strings that were attached. It also contrasts with the 100,000 dollars that her husband gave to Pakistani workers in the USA affected by the 9/11 bombing. Despite her husband being received by Presidents and her own appearance on Pakistani television the couple lived modestly in a two-room apartment which is part of one of their orphanages.