Bilquis Bano Edhi (Urdu: بلقیس ایدھی; 14 August 1947 – 15 April 2022) was a Pakistani nurse, humanitarian, and one of the most celebrated philanthropists in the history of Pakistan. As the co-chair and driving force behind the Edhi Foundation, she dedicated more than five decades of her life to rescuing abandoned infants, sheltering abused women, nursing the sick, and building a welfare empire that touched virtually every corner of Pakistan. She is widely known by the title “Mother of Pakistan” and “Mother of Orphans,” two honors she earned not through ceremony but through a lifetime of quiet, relentless, and deeply personal service. Born on the exact same day Pakistan came into existence — 14 August 1947 — Bilquis Edhi’s life was, in many ways, inseparable from the story of the nation itself.
She is best remembered for establishing and managing over 300 jhoolas (baby cradles) placed outside Edhi centers across Pakistan, a project that rescued more than 42,000 abandoned newborns from almost certain death. She married Abdul Sattar Edhi in 1966 and the two remained an inseparable partnership in both life and humanitarian work until his death in July 2016. Bilquis Edhi passed away on 15 April 2022 at the Aga Khan Hospital in Karachi, leaving behind a legacy that no award, title, or tribute can fully capture.
Bilquis Edhi — Quick Facts
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Bilquis Bano Edhi (بلقیس ایدھی) |
| Date of Birth | 14 August 1947 |
| Birthplace | Bantwa, Gujarat, British India (later settled in Karachi, Pakistan) |
| Date of Death | 15 April 2022 |
| Age at Death | 74 years old |
| Nationality | Pakistani |
| Religion | Islam |
| Profession | Nurse, Philanthropist, Social Worker |
| Husband | Abdul Sattar Edhi (married 1966, died 8 July 2016) |
| Children | 4 — Faisal Edhi, Kutub Edhi, Kubra Edhi, Almas Edhi |
| Organization | Edhi Foundation (Co-Chair), Bilquis Edhi Foundation (Head) |
| Known For | Jhoola Project, 42,000 babies saved, Mother of Pakistan |
| Major Awards | Ramon Magsaysay Award (1986), Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Lenin Peace Prize (1988), Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice (2015) |
| Posthumous Award | Nishan-e-Pakistan (Pakistan’s highest civilian honor) |
| Burial | Mewa Shah Graveyard, Karachi, 16 April 2022 |
Who Was Bilquis Edhi?
Bilquis Edhi was a woman who chose service over comfort at a time when neither the society around her nor the resources available to her made that choice easy. She was not born into wealth or political influence. She did not have an elite education, a famous family, or the backing of powerful institutions. What she had was an unshakeable conviction that every human life had value — including the lives of girl children left to die, of women escaping abusive homes, of mentally ill individuals abandoned on the streets, and of the dead whose bodies no one claimed. She and her husband Abdul Sattar Edhi built the Edhi Foundation into the largest private welfare organization in Pakistan, and one of the largest voluntary ambulance services in the world, from little more than a broken-down car and a small dispensary in Karachi’s old city. Bilquis was not the woman behind the man. She was, in every meaningful sense, the other half of one of the greatest philanthropic partnerships in the history of South Asia.
Family Background and Early Life
Bilquis Bano Edhi was born on 14 August 1947 in the Bantwa area of Gujarat in British India, on the very same day that Pakistan was born as an independent nation. Her family migrated to Karachi in the early years after Partition, settling in the city that would become the center of her life’s work. Her father, a trader by profession, died while she was still very young, leaving her widowed mother to raise three children — Bilquis and two brothers — on her own. Growing up in a modest household shaped by loss and financial hardship, Bilquis developed early the qualities that would define her adult life: practicality, resilience, and a deep sensitivity to suffering in others.
As a teenager, she was by her own admission not particularly interested in formal schooling. Where other young women her age were focused on education or marriage prospects, Bilquis was drawn to something more immediate and hands-on. She wanted to work, to help, and to be useful. That instinct led her, while still in the 8th grade, to join the Edhi Nurses Training Centre as a trainee — a decision that would permanently alter the course of her life, and the lives of tens of thousands of others.
Career: Joining the Edhi Foundation
In 1965, Bilquis joined the small and expanding dispensary run by Abdul Sattar Edhi in the Mithadar area of Karachi, the old city neighborhood where the Edhi Trust had been founded in 1951. The nursing staff at the dispensary at the time was small, predominantly made up of Hindu and Christian women, and their numbers had just declined further. Abdul Sattar Edhi was actively recruiting nurses, and Bilquis — notably and unusually — came from a Muslim background, which made her recruitment stand out. She underwent a six-month training program in basic healthcare and midwifery, during which her genuine passion for patient care and her natural warmth with the sick became apparent to everyone around her. Her talent did not go unnoticed by the dispensary’s founder.
Abdul Sattar Edhi, who was nearly two decades her senior, recognized in Bilquis not just a capable nurse but a person whose values and dedication mirrored his own. He gave her increasing responsibility within the nursing department and eventually, during her training period, proposed marriage to her. The proposal was, by conventional standards of the time, an unusual one — Edhi had no personal wealth beyond his charity work, and his entire existence was subordinate to his mission. His only possessions were a small dispensary and a damaged old car. Those who knew the situation at the time reportedly remarked that Bilquis was taking a considerable risk. She later recalled that people around her said she was making a mistake. She married him anyway. Bilquis Bano Edhi and Abdul Sattar Edhi were married in April 1966 in Karachi, when she was nineteen years old.
Their honeymoon is perhaps the most telling illustration of the life they had chosen together. Within hours of their wedding ceremony, a young girl arrived at their dispensary with serious head injuries. Rather than leaving for any kind of celebration, Bilquis stayed at the center to supervise blood transfusions and console the injured girl’s worried relatives. Years later, she told journalists that she did not regret a single moment of that night, because she later heard that the girl had grown up, married, and had children of her own — and that outcome, she said, was worth more than any honeymoon.
The Jhoola Project: Saving 42,000 Lives
The initiative most closely associated with Bilquis Edhi’s name and legacy is the jhoola project — a network of baby cradles placed outside Edhi centers and other public locations across Pakistan, allowing parents who felt unable to raise a child to surrender the infant safely, anonymously, and without fear of punishment or shame. The concept of the jhoola had been introduced by Abdul Sattar Edhi before their marriage, with the first cradle established in 1952. But it was Bilquis who took over the full management and expansion of the program after their marriage in 1966 and who transformed it from a small-scale gesture into one of the most impactful child welfare initiatives in Pakistani history.
Under her leadership, the number of cradles grew to more than 300, placed in locations across every major city and province of Pakistan. Each cradle carried a message in both Urdu and English: “Do not kill, leave the baby to live in the cradle.” The impact of that simple, powerful message was profound. The jhoola project is widely credited with reducing instances of female infanticide and newborn abandonment to the elements. By the time of Bilquis Edhi’s death in 2022, the program had rescued over 42,000 infants — more than 90 percent of them girls, many with physical disabilities, surrendered by families who felt they had no other choice. Bilquis personally oversaw the adoption process for thousands of these children, vetting prospective parents with care and ensuring that children with disabilities who were not adopted received a permanent home and full support within the Edhi network itself. She arranged marriages for the girls who grew up in Edhi homes and organized their wedding ceremonies herself — an act of personal investment that went far beyond institutional responsibility.
Among the most moving testaments to this work are the stories of the “Edhi babies” — adults who were rescued from Edhi cradles as infants and went on to become doctors, engineers, nurses, scholars, and professionals in Pakistan and abroad. Many returned across the years to thank Bilquis in person. She addressed all of them as her own children. They called her “Bari Ammi” — elder mother.
Expanding the Foundation: Women, Health, and Emergency Services
Bilquis Edhi’s contribution to the Edhi Foundation extended well beyond the jhoola project. She was the driving administrator of the foundation’s women’s section, overseeing a nationwide network of maternity homes, women’s hostels, shelters for women fleeing domestic abuse, and rehabilitation centers. These facilities provided free deliveries, postnatal care, family planning guidance, and a safe place to stay for women who had nowhere else to turn. At a time when Pakistan’s public health infrastructure left enormous gaps in care for the poor, Bilquis Edhi’s network filled those gaps quietly and without fanfare.
She was personally involved in identifying and caring for abused women, training them as nurses, and helping them build independent lives. She supervised the foundation’s drug rehabilitation facilities and mental health homes, visiting Edhi centers across Pakistan regularly to check on operations and the welfare of residents. The Edhi Foundation’s emergency services — which grew into the world’s largest volunteer ambulance network, with over 5,000 vehicles, two aircraft, and rescue boats — also carried her personal investment, as she worked alongside Abdul Sattar Edhi through the most demanding moments of Pakistan’s history, including wars, natural disasters, and humanitarian crises.
One of the most memorable examples of her direct humanitarian engagement came during the early years of the Pakistan-India conflicts, when Bilquis Edhi worked alongside roughly 60 to 70 volunteers to collect and ritually wash the bodies of those killed in bombings — often recovering only fragments. She has described that experience as one of the formative moments of her career, a test of her faith and her commitment to the dignity of every human being regardless of circumstance.
She was also instrumental in the story of Geeta — a young Indian girl with speech and hearing impairments who wandered into Pakistan at the age of ten and was brought to the Edhi Home in Karachi. Bilquis took the girl in, named her Geeta, placed posters of Hindu deities in her room so she could pray in her own way, and cared for her for thirteen years until her family was located in India and she was reunited with her mother in 2015. The story attracted international attention and moved Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to announce a donation to the Edhi Foundation — a rare moment of cross-border goodwill that Bilquis Edhi made possible through a simple act of unconditional care.
Personal Life and Marriage
Bilquis Edhi and Abdul Sattar Edhi remained married from April 1966 until his death on 8 July 2016 — a partnership of fifty years that was as much a professional collaboration as it was a personal bond. Their relationship, by all accounts of those who knew them, was defined by mutual respect, shared purpose, deep friendship, and a quietly irrepressible sense of humor. Bilquis was known to tease her husband affectionately in public, poking fun at his unchanging grey suit and his legendary indifference to personal grooming. He, in turn, recognized her as the backbone of the foundation’s day-to-day operations and its most direct link to the lives of the women and children it served.
They lived throughout their married life in a simple two-room apartment that formed part of one of their orphanages — a deliberate choice that reflected their philosophy of keeping every resource within the foundation rather than in personal comfort. Bilquis lived upstairs with the girls in her care, with a heavy grill she kept padlocked for their safety. Abdul Sattar Edhi used his ground floor office as his bedroom. Together they had four children: sons Faisal Edhi and Kutub Edhi, and daughters Kubra Edhi and Almas Edhi. All four children grew up inside the foundation and remained involved in its work into adulthood. After Abdul Sattar Edhi’s death in 2016, Bilquis helped her son Faisal assume leadership of the Edhi Foundation, and kept the entire family engaged in continuing their parents’ mission.
Awards and Recognition
Bilquis Edhi received some of the most prestigious humanitarian honors in the world, yet she wore them with characteristic modesty and consistently redirected attention back to the work itself and the people it served.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service (1986), often described as Asia’s Nobel Prize, was awarded jointly to Bilquis and Abdul Sattar Edhi in recognition of their pioneering community-based welfare work, including their maternity homes, adoption services, and emergency relief operations. The Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s second highest civilian honor, recognized her specific contributions to child adoption, maternity services, and women’s welfare. The Lenin Peace Prize (1988), awarded jointly with Abdul Sattar Edhi, acknowledged the Edhi Foundation’s relief operations during the Armenian earthquake disaster. The Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice (2015) honored her decades of service to the most vulnerable members of society. In 2021, the international organization The Impact Hallmarks named her among the most influential people of the first two decades of the 21st century. In 2022, the year of her death, she was named among The Muslim 500 — a global list of the world’s most influential Muslims. Posthumously, the Government of Pakistan awarded her the Nishan-e-Pakistan, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for her unparalleled services to the country.
Death and Funeral
Bilquis Bano Edhi’s health had been declining for some time in her final years. She had been ill for approximately a month before her death, and was hospitalized at the Aga Khan Hospital in Karachi after a sudden drop in blood pressure. She passed away on the evening of 15 April 2022, due to congestive heart failure, at the age of 74. The news of her death prompted an outpouring of grief across Pakistan and among Pakistanis worldwide. Tributes came from politicians, celebrities, public figures, and ordinary citizens — but the most profound came from the thousands of “Edhi babies” who took to social media to mourn the woman they had called their mother. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif described her passing as a “huge loss” for the nation. Her funeral prayers were offered at the New Memon Masjid in Karachi, and she was buried at the Mewa Shah Graveyard on 16 April 2022.
Legacy
Bilquis Edhi’s legacy is not contained in any single statistic, though the numbers are staggering: more than 42,000 infants rescued through the jhoola project, over 16,000 babies directly saved through the foundation’s combined efforts, hundreds of maternity homes and shelters, thousands of adoptions personally supervised, and a generation of Edhi babies now living productive lives across the world. Her legacy lives in the faces of those people — the doctors, nurses, engineers, and mothers who survived because she placed a cradle where a tragedy would otherwise have occurred.
She proved, across five decades of active service, that genuine philanthropy is not about grand gestures or media visibility. It is about the person who shows up, day after day, to wash the bodies of the unclaimed dead, to sit with the mother who just surrendered her newborn daughter, to find a husband for a girl raised in an orphanage and make sure her wedding is beautiful. Bilquis Edhi did all of these things and more, in a two-room apartment with no air conditioning and no personal wealth, for the entirety of her adult life. The Edhi Foundation continues its work under the leadership of her son Faisal Edhi, and the jhoola project continues to rescue infants across Pakistan — a living monument to a woman Pakistan will not soon forget.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Bilquis Edhi?
Bilquis Bano Edhi was a Pakistani nurse and humanitarian, co-chair of the Edhi Foundation, and head of the Bilquis Edhi Foundation. Known as the Mother of Pakistan and Mother of Orphans, she dedicated more than 50 years to rescuing abandoned infants, sheltering abused women, and providing free healthcare to the poor.
When was Bilquis Edhi born?
She was born on 14 August 1947 in Bantwa, Gujarat, British India — the same day Pakistan gained independence.
When did Bilquis Edhi die?
Bilquis Edhi passed away on 15 April 2022 at the Aga Khan Hospital in Karachi due to congestive heart failure. She was 74 years old.
Who was Bilquis Edhi’s husband?
Her husband was Abdul Sattar Edhi, Pakistan’s most revered philanthropist and the founder of the Edhi Foundation. They married in
April 1966 and remained together until his death on 8 July 2016.
How many children did Bilquis Edhi have?
Bilquis and Abdul Sattar Edhi had four children: sons Faisal Edhi and Kutub Edhi, and daughters Kubra Edhi and Almas Edhi. Faisal Edhi currently serves as the CEO of the Edhi Foundation.
What is the jhoola project?
The jhoola project refers to a network of over 300 baby cradles placed outside Edhi centers across Pakistan, where parents could safely and anonymously surrender unwanted infants. The cradles carry the message “Do not kill, leave the baby to live in the cradle.” Bilquis Edhi personally managed this project, which has rescued over 42,000 abandoned infants.
What awards did Bilquis Edhi receive?
Her major awards include the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service (1986), Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Lenin Peace Prize (1988), and Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice (2015). She was posthumously awarded Pakistan’s highest civilian honor, the Nishan-e-Pakistan.
Why is Bilquis Edhi called the Mother of Pakistan?
She earned this title through her lifelong personal care of thousands of abandoned and orphaned children — raising them, educating them, arranging their marriages, and treating every one of them as her own child. Her cradle project alone saved over 42,000 infant lives.
Where is Bilquis Edhi buried?
She was buried at Mewa Shah Graveyard in Karachi on 16 April 2022, following funeral prayers at the New Memon Masjid.
Is the Edhi Foundation still active?
Yes. The Edhi Foundation continues to operate under the leadership of Faisal Edhi and remains one of Pakistan’s largest and most trusted welfare organizations, operating ambulance services, orphanages, shelters, maternity homes, and rehabilitation centers nationwide and internationally.
