The original proof of Helly's theorem was topological and only uses basic homological properties of convex sets. It generalizes to all sorts of contexts, including the one you are interested in. Here is a general statement of what it can do. A homology cell is a topological space whose reduced singular homology is the same as that of a point (this implies in particular that it is nonempty).
Theorem: Let $X$ be a normal topological space such that for some $n \geq 1$, every open set $Y \subset X$ satisfies $H_q(Y)=0$ for $q \geq n$. Let $X_1,\ldots,X_k$ be a collection of closed homology cells in $X$. Assume that the intersection of any $r$ of the $X_i$ is nonempty for all $r \leq n+1$ and is a homology cell for $r \leq n$. Then the intersection of all the $X_i$ is a homology cell (and in particular is nonempty).
A discussion of this with references and specific statements is in Section 3 of
B. Farb, Group actions and Helly's theorem, Adv. Math. 222 (2009), no. 5, 1574–1588.