Abdul Sattar Edhi Rare Interview - True Pakistani - Patriotism
Channel: Mudassar Abbasi
Date: 07/07/2016

Abdul Sattar Edhi, Nishan-e-Imtiaz Award (Order of Excellence) Award, (Memoni, Urdu: عبدالستار ایدھی‎) is a prominent Pakistani philanthropist, social activist, ascetic and humanitarian. He is the founder and head of the Edhi Foundation in Pakistan.

Together with his wife, Bilquis Edhi, he received the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service. He is also the recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize and the Balzan Prize. In 2006, Institute of Business Administration Pakistan conferred an honoris causa degree of Doctor of Social Service Management for his services. In September 2010, Edhi was also awarded an honorary degree of Doctorate by the University of Bedfordshire. In 1989 Edhi received the Nishan-e-Imtiaz from the Government of Pakistan. On 1 January 2014, Edhi was voted Person of the year 2013 by the readers of The Express Tribune.

Abdul Sattar Edhi has been running the Edhi Foundation in Pakistan for the better part of six decades. The foundation owns and operates a large ambulance service, free nursing homes, orphanages, clinics, women’s shelters, food kitchens, and rehabilitation centers for drug addicts and mentally ill individuals all across the country.

Edhi has remained a simple and humble man. To this day, he owns two pairs of clothes, has never taken a salary from his organisation and lives in a small two bedroom apartment over his clinic in Karachi. He has been recommended for a Nobel Peace prize by the Prime Minister of Pakistan with more than 30,000 signing a petition by Ziauddin Yousafzai, the father of Malala Yousafzai for his nomination. On 25 June 2013 Edhi's kidneys failed and it was announced that he will be on dialysis for the rest of his life, unless he finds a kidney donor. The Guardian called him 'a legendary charity worker known for his asceticism'. He has been called the greatest living humanitarian in the world.