Abdul Sattar Edhi and Bilquis Bano Edhi

1986 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees for Public Service from Pakistan. Abdul Sattar Edhi first became a businessman; and once stable, redefined social service and health care in Pakistan. Together with fellow Memon businessmen, he funded a dispensary for free medicines and volunteer medical services. This expanded into a maternity home for unwed mothers and an orphanage, and also accommodated the elderly, with training, education and adoption services. His newspaper ads asked people to leave unwanted babies in the dispensary to discourage the common practice of killing abandoned infants.

Later, Edhi refitted an old pick-up truck into an ambulance with himself as driver, and with volunteers, picked up the sick, and the abandoned, living or dead. With wife Bilquis, he started the “Highways Project,” an emergency ambulance service along the Karachi-Peshawar highway; first aid awaits at Edhi Centers found at every 25 kilometer-mark. Voluntary donations sustain all these and government funds are not accepted. Donors have no tax exemptions and the dissatisfied get refunds. “One way,” says Edhi, “ of ensuring that they do not have motives besides helping their countrymen. People believe I am mad. I agree with them, for unless one becomes mad and eliminates his sense of self, he can’t do this sort of work that puts him on call twenty-four hours of the day.”