I reported and presented a two-part radio documentary series for the BBC World Service focusing on Muhammad Safdar, a Karachi ambulance driver.
In Karachi, with a population of around 20 million people, ambulance drivers are on the front lines of this megacity’s shifting conflicts. With no state ambulance service in Pakistan, the Edhi Foundation, set up by the late Abdul Sattar Edhi in 1954, stepped in to offer services to the poor. Safdar drives one of its fleet of four hundred ambulances: rudimentary converted vans with basic emergency provision. His missions bring him to many of Karachi’s most deprived and troubled areas, revealing the complex social and economic problems at the heart of the country.
You can listen to both episodes over at the BBC, and I also wrote about Safdar’s story in my book Karachi Vice.