Pakistan’s Edhi Ambulance Service: Symbol of Compassion

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Pakistan’s Edhi Ambulance Service: Symbol of Compassion

The Economic Times
December 29th, 2011

Credit: Wikimedia

By Vinod Mahanta

The name Edhi is omnipresent in Karachi with his eponymous ambulances parked every few kilometres in this bustling metropolis but the man himself is elusive. While the ambulances may just be a call away, it takes several calls over seven days to reach the person whom all of Pakistan reveres – Abdul Sattar Edhi. “Edhi saab, has left for a far-flung village in Baluchistan half-an-hour ago. There has been a disease outbreak with some deaths reported. Call later,” says the operator from an Edhi centre. Another try, three days later, gets a response that they had lost touch with Edhi.

Next day, thinking that the renowned social worker was probably trying to avoid an Indian reporter, I rope in a local to get an appointment. Even this ploy fails as he gets a worrying answer: Edhi saab was untraceable and the coast guard had been roped in to look for him. On my final day in Karachi, I make a last ditch effort. This time, I was directed to another office.

And a call later, Edhi is on the line, “aap aafice mein aa jayen, main yahin hoon.” I scramble to his small nondescript office in the crowded Boulton Market,a part of the Mithadar area in Karachi, police escort in tow, knowing fully well that a single call from any emergency anywhere in Karachi can take away my subject for good. “I am a sahafi (journalist) from India.

I have an appointment with Edhi Sahab,” I tell the receptionist-cum-office girl. She points to the frail bearded old man sitting alone on a worn out sofa next to her table, wearing a well worn brown Pathani suit and a pair of black plastic slippers. It’s humbling to watch the man who single-handedly changed the concept of social service in Pakistan, and in doing so, touched millions of lives, sit alone in his office without any pretensions, recouping from his arduous journey from Baluchistan.

Greetings over, out of curiosity I ask him the reason for his disappearance through the past week. “I was in Garanth village in Baluchistan. It’s a very backward area and people still live in medieval conditions. I had heard that there was a disease afflicting both humans and cattle. It was an 11-hour back-breaking journey on motorcycles and camels. I had to go,” he says.

An Edhi-fice of compassion: Too many good men

Edhi had put together a team of 11 doctors and taken medicines and supplies to the far-flung Baluchistan village where a disease outbreak has resulted in eight human and some 150 camel deaths. A 15-member coast team had found Edhi after a seven-hour search in the inhospitable terrain.

[Source: The Economic Times]