When Abdul Sattar Edhi was eleven years old, his mother suffered a devastating stroke. She became physically and mentally disabled, and Edhi dropped out of school to care for her full-time -- bathing her, feeding her, attending to her every need until she died in early 1947. Months later, during the Partition of India, Edhi and his family fled to Karachi amid death and displacement. These two experiences -- intimate caregiving and mass human suffering -- fused into a single conviction. By 1951, Edhi had bought a small shop in Karachi and opened a free dispensary. It was the seed of what would become the largest volunteer ambulance organization on earth.
The early Edhi Foundation was literally a one-person operation run from a single room. But Edhi's relentless work ethic and absolute refusal to turn anyone away -- regardless of religion, ethnicity, or social status -- drew volunteers and donations. He established his first formal welfare center in 1957. From there, the organization grew into a nationwide network with over 300 centers, from major cities to remote rural areas. Air ambulances extended the reach into mountainous regions where roads did not exist. By the 1990s, the foundation operated eight major hospitals in Karachi alone, along with eye clinics, diabetic centers, surgical units, blood banks, and mobile dispensaries. The foundation's legal aid department has secured the release of prisoners wrongly held. Doctors visit jails to provide medical care and supplies.
Bilquis Edhi, a nurse who married Abdul Sattar in 1966, oversaw the foundation's maternity and adoption services. She introduced the jhoola project -- cradles placed outside Edhi emergency centers where desperate mothers could leave infants they could not care for. The Urdu word jhoola means cradle. The concept was radical in its simplicity: no questions asked, no judgment, no paperwork at the door. Children left in the jhoolas were taken in, cared for, and placed with pre-screened adoptive families. In a society where unmarried pregnancy carries severe stigma and where abandoned infants sometimes met worse fates, the jhoola system offered a lifeline. Bilquis herself raised hundreds of children and oversaw the adoption of thousands more.
The Edhi Foundation has held the Guinness World Record for the world's largest volunteer ambulance organization since 1997. As of 2021, it owns over 5,000 ambulance vans stationed across Pakistan. These white vans with their distinctive green markings are often the first to arrive at any disaster -- earthquakes, floods, bombings, accidents. It was an Edhi ambulance that recovered the body of American journalist Daniel Pearl after his murder in 2002. Twenty-eight rescue boats serve the Arabian Sea coast, responding to floods and shipwrecks. The foundation sent $100,000 in aid to the United States after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 -- a gesture that underscored Edhi's belief that humanitarian duty knows no borders.
Abdul Sattar Edhi died on July 8, 2016, at the age of 88, after three years of kidney failure and dialysis. His last wish was that his organs be donated, but only his corneas were healthy enough for transplant. He was given a state funeral, and thousands gathered in Karachi to mourn. Google honored him with a Doodle on his birthday in 2017. The State Bank of Pakistan issued a commemorative Rs50 coin. Karachi renamed a major avenue after him. But the truest memorial is the foundation itself, now run by his son Faisal Edhi, still operating on its founding principle -- painted on the side of every ambulance -- 'Live and help live.' The slogan captures what one man's response to his mother's suffering eventually became: an infrastructure of compassion serving an entire nation.
The Edhi Foundation headquarters is located at approximately 24.854°N, 67.001°E in central Karachi. Not individually visible from altitude, but the organization's ambulances are ubiquitous across the city. Jinnah International Airport (OPKC) is approximately 10 km to the north. The foundation's main campus is near Karachi's downtown core.