31.01.2011                     26.Shevat, 5771

Ägypten:

Egyptians band together as riots near a week

Demonstrators donate blood, clean up trash and direct traffic as government remains paralyzed.

As throngs of people headed towards downtown Cairo throughout the day on Sunday, another area of the city was experiencing an influx of people: the Cairo University Hospital, the city’s largest hospital. The people were not patients wounded in the six days of violent protests, but came by the hundreds to donate blood – more than 1,000 people in six hours, according to estimates from the volunteers on duty.
“It’s a very Egyptian habit to be beside each other at acute or hard times,” said Dr. Gehad El-Ata, the deputy director of Cairo University Hospital, the self-proclaimed largest hospital in North Africa. El-Ata added that over the past six days, the hospital had treated 500 people wounded in the demonstrations, though 90 percent had been injured lightly and were quickly released. The remainder, including dozens of gunshot victims, were still hospitalized….