One Essential Read

Recommended by Kate Turton, Newsletter Editor

Gaza's doctors were building a health system. Then came war.

As the Israel-Hamas war rages on in Gaza, more than 490 health workers have been killed, according to Gaza's health ministry, including nearly 4% of all Gazan specialist doctors. My colleagues interviewed the relatives, colleagues and friends of some of them, chronicling the struggle of Gazan doctors to train and work under the Israeli blockade of the enclave.

These deaths have done Gaza's health service grave harm.

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Handout photo from 2008 of Gazan obstetrician-gynecologist Dr Sireen Al-Attar (R) and her friend and fellow medical student Dr Sana Najjar. Dr Sana Najjar/Handout via REUTERS

Behind the news

Maggie Fick, a London-based Reuters journalist who began interviewing doctors for this story in January, said: "We learned through the reporting that although the health service in Gaza pre-war was fraught with difficulties, in some fields it had made advances due to investment and support from abroad and the persistence of the doctors themselves.

"The doctors whose stories we told have been killed in the war, so we relied upon interviews with their relatives, colleagues and friends. It was striking to learn of the great lengths these medical professionals undertook to receive advanced specialist training that they ultimately deployed in Gaza with the aim of improving health care there for patients."

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