KARACHI, June 25: Abdul Sattar Edhi said on Tuesday that he had enough strength to live normally with his ill-functioning kidneys and had donated the rest of his body parts that could help lives of over a dozen people when he would be “nowhere around” physically.

“I have to visit the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation for dialysis once a week as an outpatient to live normally and serve humanity. I hope to serve people when I will be no more in the physical world,” said Mr Edhi at a press conference in SIUT.

He said due to his chronic diabetes his kidneys were not functioning normally which led him to obtain dialysis support.

“It is normal to live without proper kidneys. I came here to live and serve people and even when I am no longer alive I will live in parts in many people’s bodies,” a frail Mr Edhi, who has been shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize twice, said and received a thumping round of applause from the large number of volunteers in the hall.

When asked which organs Mr Edhi had donated, Dr Adibul Hasan Rizvi, director of SIUT, said “All. He has donated every organ.”

He said Mr Edhi’s kidneys had “started failing” and he had to depend on dialysis support for the rest of his life.

Dr Rizvi said the chances were “slim” of a successful transplant due to Mr Edhi’s feeble health condition. However, a donor request had been made and experts were mulling over means for a successful operation.

Dr Rizvi made a philosophical suggestion to make to keep Mr Edhi “immortal”.

“Produce more Edhis,” he said. “It is the only way for our society to keep him from dying.”

Dr Rizvi stressed the need for promoting organ donation as it would help those patients who had reached the end stage of renal failure.

He said Mr Edhi was one of the first Pakistanis who pledged to donate his organs at SIUT. He called upon donors to take their family into confidence while making a pledge to donate their organs as in case of brain death the family’s cooperation was essential.

About SIUT’s performance, he said it had carried out 4,000 transplantations. Similarly, he said, some 700 dialysis sessions were carried out at SIUT daily.