Abrar Hussain of DOT : Citizens in the Polish city of Gdańsk have been queuing to donate blood to help their mayor, following a stabbing that left him in a critical condition in hospital.
Paweł Adamowicz, 53, who has held the post since 1998, was stabbed in the chest on stage aat a charity concert on Sunday evening. He had surgery overnight that lasted more than five hours.
“Unfortunately we cannot yet say that Paweł Adamowicz’s condition is stable,” Dr Jerzy Karpinski, director of the health department in Gdańsk’s regional administration, told Radio Gdańsk yesterday morning.
“It is still too early to say that, because the situation is very serious, and still isn’t sufficiently stabilized so as to be able to talk about a positive prognosis; the prognosis regarding his life and health is uncertain.”
On Sunday night, Gdańsk’s regional centre for blood donation and blood medicine made an appeal on social media for blood donations from group O RhD negative. It resulted in crowds of residents queuing for hours to register at the centre and donate their blood in support of their mayor.
“Every time there is a call to donate blood, I come and do it,” one donor told Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. “There’s no time to waste. If necessary, I would come in the middle of the night. It’s not a problem, we have to help each other.”
“I phoned my boss to let him know, he understood,” another donor told the newspaper. “It is an important impulse, to go and help. The queues are considerable, you can see that the appeal had its desired effect.”
It was later reported that the alleged assailant, 27-year-old Stefan W, who was released from prison last month, blamed Adamowicz’s former political party for his jailing in 2014 for a series of violent attacks.
Adamowicz has long been considered a hate figure in far-right circles for his vigorous defence of migrants and refugees and LGBT rights, but no evidence has emerged that the attack was politically motivated.
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