Paralysed man's lonely tweet leads to flood of hospital visitors

One man's plea for somebody to visit him becomes most retweeted message in Saudi history.

A hospital in Saudi Arabia has been flooded with visitors after a Twitter appeal by a 24-year-old man who is paralysed from the neck down.

The young man, named only as 'Ibrahim', is a patient in King Khalid University Hospital, in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Bedbound following a car accident in 2012, he told followers that he was in need of expensive surgergy abroad, and had not been visited by his family in months.

On May 10, he tweeted the following:

انا ابراهيم عمري 24 مشلول شلل كامل ومرقد في مستشفى الملك خالد الجامعي جناح21 غرفه3 سرير3 احتاج لزراعه خلايا جذعيه بالمانيا وعلاج طبيعي

— إبراهيم الإعاقة و الإكتئاب (@ibr5040) May 11, 2014

"I am Ibrahim, I'm 24 years old fully paralysed and I'm laying in King Khaled's hospital, Wing 21, room three, bed three, I need stem cell treatment in Germany."

زيارة المريض فيها اجر كبير، فتعالو اسعدوني بزيارتكم،،

— إبراهيم الإعاقة و الإكتئاب (@ibr5040) May 10, 2014

"Visiting the ill has a huge blessing, come and make me happy with your visit."

Within hours, the tweet had caught fire in Saudi social media circles, eventually becoming the most retweeted message in the country's history.

A hashtag - #VisitIbrahim - soon emerged, with more than 200,000 mentions per day at its peak.

And not only that.

The visitors began to arrive.

In their droves.

"The hospital became so busy that its officials had to put a temporary ban on all of its visitors as the number of people in the building was affecting the work of its staff," the Independent reported.

Ibrahim was inundated with new friends, of all ages and from all over the country.

اخونا من لبنان وعد ابراهيم بزوجه من لبنان pic.twitter.com/GW0u60QyTW

— إبراهيم الإعاقة و الإكتئاب (@ibr5040) May 15, 2014

ما اجمل البراءه الله يخليها لوالديها ويبارك فيها ويكبر حظها بالدنيا والآخره pic.twitter.com/VazAk6n67V

— إبراهيم الإعاقة و الإكتئاب (@ibr5040) May 14, 2014

pic.twitter.com/16JegQfgfr

— إبراهيم الإعاقة و الإكتئاب (@ibr5040) May 13, 2014

Ibrahim now has daily visitors and over 56,000 Twitter followers.

Word of his plight also reached the ears of the Saudi royal family, with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal contributing half a million riyals (almost €100,000) towards the costs of his future surgery in Germany.

Now many in Saudi Arabia have urged that the groundswell of goodwill shown Ibrahim to be extended to others in similar situations.

(H/T: Al-Jazeera)