Ahmad Al-Sahhar was 28, a son, brother, doctor, husband and dreamer.

Medicine had been his childhood dream, and as a paediatrician he hoped to dedicate his future to caring for children in Gaza.

As the conflict intensified, Ahmad remained at Al-Awda Hospital in north Gaza. Before his family evacuated south, his eldest brother urged him to leave with them.

Ahmad refused: “I can’t leave my work. People need me.”

For Ahmad, staying was not an act of heroism that he expected people to celebrate.

According to his family, it came from something simpler – his deep sense of duty as a doctor and commitment to the patients who needed him.

His eldest brother embraced him goodbye, unaware that was for the last time.

On 21 November 2023, Ahmad made a final call to his brother and said that a room next to where he and his colleagues were staying had been hit.

Minutes later Ahmad’s room was struck.

He was killed at Al-Awda Hospital alongside two colleagues, Dr Ziad Al-Tatari and Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila. His eldest brother refers to it as “the black day”.

Ahmad’s mother, who had remained in the north, was unaware of what had happened.

She was making her way to Al-Awda Hospital where Ahmad had arranged for her to stay, believing the hospital would be a place of safety.

Instead, she arrived to learn that her son had been killed and buried.

The hospital where she expected to find safety with her son became the place where she learned she had lost him.

She could not believe it.

She only accepted that Ahmad was gone when she was taken to his burial place.

Her losses did not end that day.

Ahmad was the first of four brothers in his family of eight siblings to be killed during the conflict. Before she died in July 2025, his mother had endured the loss of four sons.

Today, Ahmed’s eldest brother’s message to the world is simple:

 “Save what remains of life. We are people who love life. We feel, we dream and we want the chance to live those dreams.”

Ahmad’s dream was to care for children.

He wanted to build a home.

He wanted to live.

Each lost health worker is more than a number: behind the statistics are professions interrupted, patients left without care, colleagues carrying the loss and a family mourning someone who will never return.

Attacks on health care may happen in a moment, but their impacts – on families, patients, communities and the health system left behind – last a lifetime.

Ahmed’s eldest brother understands all too well the urgent need to protect health workers and ensure that international humanitarian law is respected.

The repeated calls to do so, he says, must be translated into action.