The Angel of Mercy

A humble ascetic who built one of the world's largest volunteer ambulance networks and devoted his entire life to the poorest.

Abdul Sattar Edhi (1928 to 2016) grew up caring for his ailing mother, an experience that awakened in him a lifelong empathy for the sick, the helpless and the abandoned. In 1951 he opened a small free dispensary in Karachi, and from that single act of service grew one of the most remarkable humanitarian institutions the world has ever seen.

Over the following decades, Edhi built the Edhi Foundation into a vast network of care. It came to operate what is widely described as the world's largest volunteer ambulance service, alongside orphanages, homeless shelters, homes for the elderly, and even animal shelters, all open to anyone in need regardless of faith, ethnicity or background.

Edhi lived with extraordinary personal simplicity. Despite the enormous scale of his work, he owned almost nothing, wore plain clothes, and insisted that every rupee donated should go to those who needed it. His foundation rescued thousands of abandoned infants through its cradle programme and reached people that the state and society had left behind.

When he died in 2016 at the age of 88, he was given a state funeral and mourned as a man many regarded as a living saint. His work did not end with him: the Edhi Foundation continues its mission today under his family's stewardship, still answering emergency calls day and night.