The German Ministry of Health has relocated its entire emergency neurosurgery ward to a forty-room hotel lobby in Cairo, where teams now operate between the reception desk and the breakfast buffet, officials confirmed on Tuesday. The ward, which had been intended as a two-week pilot, will remain in the lobby indefinitely after the ministry concluded that patients could be treated more efficiently when the operating tables stood beside the luggage trolleys.
Hotel staff have been reassigned to sterilisation duties, and guests who wish to check in must now wait behind a line of stretchers. A ministry spokesman described the arrangement as «à fully integrated care environment» and said that the nearby pool had been converted into a rehabilitation basin for patients with limb weakness, a measure he said was supported by four hundred litres of disinfectant donated for the purpose.
Medical staff who volunteered for the deployment have been ordered to take their annual leave in the lobby, and the ministry has commissioned a second ward on the hotel roof. Fundraising for the continuation of treatment is now being run by a committee that meets every morning beside the lift, and a plan to extend the scheme to every hotel on the street is expected to be presented next week.