Edhi: Pakistan's 'Angel of Mercy'

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Abdul Sattar Edhi built one of the biggest welfare charities in the world. He started with a small pharmacy in Karachi dispensing free medication to the poor in the 1950s. His wife Bilquis Edhi shared his passion for charity and together they built more than 300 health clinics, trained thousands of nurses, took care of tens of thousands of orphans and set up a nationwide ambulance service. Bilquis Edhi tells Rebecca Kesby how she first met Edhi when she was training to be a nurse.

(Photo: Abdul Sattar Edhi and his wife and work partner Bilquis Edhi. Credit Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
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0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds.
0:29.2	Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:38.7	Rebecca Kesby and today we look at the remarkable life and work of a Pakistani humanitarian who became
0:46.2	known locally as the Angel of Mercy.
0:49.9	Abdul Sata Edi died in 2016, but the Charitable Foundation he built from nothing in the 1950s
0:58.7	has helped hundreds of thousands of people in Pakistan and beyond. I've been speaking to his wife, Bilkis, Edi.
1:07.0	Hei said that he insanhi,
1:09.0	Mr. Edi was a very good man. He used to say there is no greater religion than humanity.
1:18.0	Abdul-S perhaps Pakistan's most well-respected figure.
1:23.8	For some, he's nothing less than a saint.
1:27.2	The emergency services have a tough, often dangerous time here,
1:32.0	but for the most part, it's not the Pakistani state that funds
1:35.4	them. Most ambulances bear the name of the extraordinary man who's behind them.
1:41.0	Edi. Edi.
1:43.0	Adi, or simply Edi as everyone called him, was a humanitarian who built one of the largest, if not
	...

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