Mother of Pakistan Bilquis Edhi passes away

Bilquis Bano Edhi, widow of Abdul Sattar Edhi passed away, 24News HD TV Channel reported on Friday. She was a cardiac patient and under treatment in Agha Khan Hospital in Karachi for the last five days.

She was a professional nurse and one of the most active philanthropists in Pakistan along with serving as co-chair of the Edhi Foundation. 

She has been nicknamed, The Mother of Pakistan. 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. Together with her husband, their charity has saved over 16,000 unwanted babies. She was awarded the prestigious ‘Hilal-e-Imtiaz’.

She is also the recipient of the ‘Lenin Peace Prize’. Her charity runs many services in Pakistan including a hospital and emergency service in Karachi.

Bilquis Edhi – the young lass who was not very good at studies, joined the nurses' training course at the Edhi Nurses Training Centre when she was in the 8th grade.

Later Abdul Sattar Edhi proposed to her and they got married in April 1966. Since then, she has been working with the Edhi Foundation – A Foundation that was started by Abdul Sattar Edhi with the mission to provide aid to Pakistan’s poor and down-trodden has become Pakistan’s major relief organization under the leadership of the husband and wife – a team of Abdul Sattar and Bilquis Edhi. Today, in addition to services provided in Pakistan, the Edhi Foundation is a major resource for assisting victims of disaster internationally.

Abdul Sattar Edhi’s possessions at the time of his marriage were a broken old car and a small dispensary. There was a maternity home on the first floor with 6-7 beds, a small room – 6’ X 6’ on the ground floor which served as an office and a similar room on the first floor. There wasn’t much else but even in those days when the newlywed couple had very limited resources, people used to leave their kids with them and Bilquis Edhi used to look after them.