I'm in Karachi for the BBC World Service.

Pakistan's mega city of 20 million people has no state ambulance service.

In its place a charity steps in, the ED Foundation. I've got

family in Karachi and have been reporting on the city for almost a decade. In that time, I've seen political and ethnic violence reach a crescendo

before a bloody army-led crackdown restored a level of order to the streets.

Ambulance drivers have been at the front line of every aspect of this changing landscape and their experience offers an insight into the shifting reality of this city, a place that has survived astonishing levels of violence.

Where the situation is bad, we are going into that situation to help and people are running away from it.

Fessel Edi oversees a network of over 400 ambulances in Karachi,

which transports nearly 1500 patients every single day.

The organization was founded by Fessel's father, Abdul Sutter Edi, who started off with a second-hand

ambulance in 1954.

My mother used to tell when I was 10 years old, I believe,

that the organization you see, the ambulances, the vehicles, it's not ours, it's not

belong to us.

We are just custodian.

So don't ever think in your mind that these properties are ours.

That made me think that I'm just a servant.

The only thing in our mind is to just help and work for the common public.

Since Pakistan was founded in 1947, Karachi has experienced tidal waves of ethnic and political violence, waves which have ebbed

and flowed over the decades. It's the economic heart of the country, so people have migrated here from other provinces, as well as from

neighbouring Afghanistan.

The city has expanded rapidly, dizzyingly, too fast for infrastructure to keep up, meaning that different ethnic groups are competing for space and resources.

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