Gaza’s health workers need more than thoughts and prayers – they need protection

I’m a paediatric neurologist. I work in hospitals with children and families facing the worst moments of their lives. I’ve also taught and trained medics in Gaza, for over a decade, in crumbling health systems, and in communities under siege. I’ve come to understand that there are moments in history when the responsibility of a health worker extends beyond the clinic or ward – when silence itself becomes complicity.

Gaza is living one of those moments.

Since October 2023, more than 1,400 health workers have been killed in Gaza. Ambulances have been bombed, clinics levelled, hospitals grounds turned into mass graves. Doctors have had to operate on children without anaesthetic. Surgeons have been raped to death. And still, in the face of the unthinkable, Gaza’s medics continue to treat the wounded with dignity, courage and defiance.

That’s why I helped found Health Workers 4 Palestine – a global grassroots network of medical professionals demanding an end to the targeting of healthcare and standing in solidarity with our colleagues in Gaza.

And it’s why I’m helping organise Voices of Solidarity – the world’s largest cultural fundraiser for Palestinian health workers – taking place in London on 19 of July, alongside household names like Juliet Stevenson, Khalid Abdalla, Rosie Jones, Alexei Sayle, Nish Kumar, Paloma Faith and Jen Brister.

Because solidarity is not a slogan. It is an action.

And right now, Gaza’s health workers need more than thoughts and prayers. They need oxygen and dialysis machines. They need antibiotics and surgical tools. And they need trauma support. They need protection. And they need the world to see them, to listen to them, and to act with them.

As a British-Egyptian doctor who has taught junior doctors and medical students inside Gaza’s health system for over a decade, I have witnessed the quiet heroism of Palestinian health workers. I’ve spoken to paramedics who risked sniper fire to reach the injured. Nurses who kept entire units running with no electricity. Paediatricians who stayed beside incubators even as tanks rolled in.

One of my colleagues in Gaza sent me a voice note in the early days of the onsalught. He was whispering from a tent where he had taken shelter with his family after her hospital was bombed. “We have nothing left,” she said. “But we are still trying to help the injured. Even if we die doing it.”

What do you do with a message like that? You mourn. You rage. And then you organise.

From our very first candlelit vigil last November, Health Workers 4 Palestine has grown into a movement. Thousands of medics across the UK and globally have mobilised – signing open letters, raising funds and lobbying health and government  institutions to end their complicity in the systematic destruction of healthcare in Gaza.

But we also realised something else: that sustaining a movement also requires spaces for joy, connection, and remembrance. That resistance isn’t only fought in protest marches and operating theatres – but also through culture, community and care.

Voices of Solidarity was born out of that understanding.

On Saturday 19 July, more than 2,000 people will gather at the Troxy in East London for a night of music, comedy and spoken word in honour of Gaza’s health workers. We’ll be joined by artists and performers who have used their platforms to speak truth: Bassem Youssef, Paloma Faith, Zeyne, Ghalia Benali, Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, Juliet Stevenson and many more. But more than a show, this is a call to action.

Read more:

• ‘It’s hell on Earth’: British doctors recall seeing ‘unimaginable suffering’ in Gaza
• I’m an aid worker in Gaza – the situation has never been worse
• As the government moves to ban Palestine Action, are terror laws being used for ‘political policing’?

Every penny raised will go to the Health Workers 4 Palestine Mutual Aid Fund – a fund co-designed with medics in Gaza, focused on emergency support now, and rebuilding with justice later. Whether it’s paying stipends to displaced doctors, funding mobile clinics, or rebuilding maternity wards – this is about giving our colleagues the resources they say they need, not what we think is best.

Because real solidarity means listening. It means decentring ourselves. It means resisting the saviour complex that too often seeps into humanitarian work. And it also means building power.

This movement isn’t just about Gaza or Palestine. It’s about us. It’s about the world we want to live in, and that we want to leave for our children. One where healthcare is protected, not criminalised. Where medics are respected, not targeted. Where dignity is non-negotiable.

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And the truth is, it’s already happening. Across the UK, we’ve seen NHS workers defy gag orders to speak out. We’ve seen community clinics donate equipment to Gaza. We’ve seen unions pass motions in support of Palestinian rights. And we’ve seen doctors organise in ways we’ve never seen before.

But we’ve also seen the cost. Healthcare workers fired, suspended or silenced for wearing badges, for signing letters, for daring to care. So this moment, and this event,  is also a reclamation.

We are saying: our grief will not be policed, our solidarity will not be criminalised, and our profession will not be co-opted by those who uphold genocide, apartheid and occupation.

Because the Hippocratic oath doesn’t stop at a border. And neutrality, in the face of genocide, is not ethical; it is in fact dangerous.

There’s a quote from Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, the British-Palestinian surgeon who returned to Gaza during the siege: “In Gaza, every health worker is a hero. Not because they chose to die – but because they chose to care, again and again, even when the world stopped caring.”

Voices of Solidarity is our way of saying: we still care. And we’re not going anywhere.

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To anyone reading this – whether you’re a student, a parent, a musician, or a medic – I urge you to join us. Come to the event. Support the fund. Share the stories of Gaza’s health workers. Because these are not just victims. They are our colleagues. Our comrades. Our inspiration.

In the end, healing begins with those who care for others, many of whom have paid the ultimate price for a vision of a better world.

And as we gather under one roof this July, united in grief, in rage, in song, we are not just remembering them.

We are recommitting to them.

Because we are not alone.

And we are each other’s allies.

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Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan is the founder and president of Health Workers 4 Palestine and the organiser behind Voices of Solidarity, which takes place on July 19 at the Troxy in London.

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