‘Person of the two Decades’ Bilquis Edhi passes away at 74

LAHORE, Apr 15 (APP): Pakistan’s towering philanthropist, humanitarian and ‘Person of the two Decades’ Bilquis Edhi passed away after a brief illness in Karachi on Friday. She was 74, according to a spokesperson for the Edhi Foundation Lahore.

Her death was confirmed by her son Faisal Edhi. The spokesperson said Bilquis was suffering from “multiple ailments”. “She had heart problems in addition to lung issues,” he said.

Earlier this week, Bilquis Edhi was rushed to a private hospital in Karachi after her blood pressure suddenly dropped. She had already undergone bypass procedure twice.

Bilquis Bano Edhi, the wife of the late Abdul Sattar Edhi, was a professional nurse and the head of the Bilquis Edhi Foundation. She spent more than six decades of her life in serving the humanity in need. Her charity saved over 42,000 unwanted babies by placing ‘jhoolas’ [cradles] at the Edhi Homes and centres across the country.

In January 2021, Bilquis Edhi was shortlisted by an international organisation ‘Impact Hallmarks’, for being one of the most impactful persons of the world. She was among the top 20 persons and works, selected from 1.6 million entries from 190 countries of the world for the prestigious ‘Person of the Decade’ title.

Called the Mother of Pakistan, Bilquis Edhi already had been given various national and foreign awards including Hilal-e-Imtiaz, the Lenin Peace Prize, Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice (2015), and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service; she received along with her husband Abdul Sattar Edhi in 1986.

Bilquis Edhi was born on the same day as Pakistan, 14 August 1947 in Bantva, a city in Gujarat state of India. Communal riots drove the family to Bombay from where they migrated a few months later to Pakistan – to Mithadar area of Karachi.

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.

She got married to Abdul Sattar Edhi at the age of 17. The newlyweds possessed only a broken old car and a small dispensary. She often relates a story that on their honeymoon, she spent all her time tending to a young girl with head injuries, left at the dispensary.

Bilquis Edhi remembers her first major experience at Edhi Foundation, when during the war; the bombings resulted in a number of mutilated bodies reaching the dispensary, which she had to wash for burial.

The Edhi Foundation is the largest emergency service in Pakistan, but Bilquis Edhi lived all her life in a simple two-bedroom home that she owned along with her husband.

The home is actually part of an orphanage that the Edhi Foundation runs.

Over the years, she is visited by many of her orphans, who were happily adopted. She is often stopped and thanked by people who received much needed aid from the Edhi Foundation, and heard back from abused women whom she sheltered, trained as nurses and helped start a new life.

Although Bilquis Edhi has won many awards, she often comments that the greatest rewards she receives are the success stories of those helped by the Edhi Foundation.