Bilquis Bano Edhi wife of Abdul Sattar Edhi, is a professional nurse and one of the most active philanthropists in Pakistan. She has been nicknamed, The Mother of Pakistan.[1] She was born in 1947 in Karachi. She heads the Bilquis Edhi Foundation, and with her husband received the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service.[2][3]
Her charity runs many services in Pakistan including a hospital and
emergency service in Karachi. Together with her husband their charity
has saved over 16,000 unwanted babies.
Biography
Bilques Edhi was born in the city of Bantva in which is now western
India on August 14, 1947. 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.[4]
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.[2]
Her future husband proposed to her after recognising her talents and
allowing her to lead the small nursing department. He had recognised 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[2]
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."[4] The Edhi Foundation's unofficial website uses the line "Making a difference and changing lives forever".[5]
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 in English and Urdu “Do not kill, leave the baby to live in
the cradle.” 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 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.[6] 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[7] the couple still live modestly in a two room apartment which is part of one of their orphanages.
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