STORY: Doctor Sireen Al-Attar, obstetrician
Doctor Medhat Saidam, plastic surgeon
Doctor Hammam Alloh, kidney specialist
They are among at least 490 Gazan healthcare workers killed since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Fifty-five of these healthcare workers were specialists, part of a vanguard improving public health for Gaza's fast-growing population.
A network of knowledge that it will take Gaza years to recover died with them.
Reuters could not independently verify the circumstances of their deaths.
Even before the war, the health service in Gaza was fraught with difficulties.
Israel had imposed a blockade on the Palestinian enclave after Hamas seized control there in 2007.
But the health sector was making advances in some fields, thanks to investment and support from abroad and the persistence of doctors like Al-Attar, Saidam and Alloh.
They wanted to create a healthcare system for a future Palestinian state.
Then came the war.
Dr Sireen Al-Attar was killed in an Israeli airstrike days after Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to Gaza's health ministry.
She was sheltering at her parents' home in Bureij, a refugee camp, with her three children.
In 2008, she'd won Gaza's only scholarship for specialty training in obstetrics and gynecology - in Amman, Jordan.
Over the following years in Gaza, she passed on the skills she had learned.
Dr Deborah Harrington is a British obstetrician who helped instruct Al-Attar and others.
::Dr Deborah Harrington, Obstetrician
"She was really passionate about improving outcomes for women and their babies. She was passionate about teaching and she wanted to do something a little bit different, in that she wanted to bring the multidisciplinary team, she wanted to involve midwives and doctors together to make a better experience for women, to make safer and better outcomes for them."
The killing of even one doctor like Al-Attar could cripple the services they led where specialists were few, doctors and experts say.
Specialist doctors were part of a strategic effort by Hamas to build a self-sufficient health system for Gaza, the enclave's first health minister told Reuters.
Hamas and its allies have long argued that Israel has a goal of destroying its health system, an allegation Israel's military denies.
Reuters found that seven of the 55 specialists were killed in hospitals. Twenty-three died while away from work.
Israel's military did not comment on the deaths of the doctors named in this story.
But it said in a statement to Reuters that the Israel Defense Forces had "overwhelming and irrefutable" evidence that Hamas made military use of hospitals and medical infrastructure.
Reuters was unable to independently verify those competing claims.
Kidney specialist Dr Hammam Alloh is another case in point.
The day Hamas attacked Israel last October, he contacted Dr Tarek Loubani, who is based in Canada and medical director of The Glia Project, which makes medical devices for conflict zones.
Alloh recalled how in Gaza's 2014 war, patients had died because hospitals couldn't obtain dialyzers.
::Dr Tarek Loubani, Medical Director of the Glia Project
"He knew that the work we did with Glia (Project), was to make devices in nearly impossible situations. We have been doing this for several years and so he instantly recognized that his patients on dialysis were going to need equipment, a lot of it."
But they could do little to help.
And five weeks later, Alloh was killed in an airstrike on his in-laws' house near Al Shifa Hospital, his sister and four colleagues told Reuters.
He was one of just three kidney specialists. Another has left Gaza, leaving only one.
In mid-October, the body of plastic surgeon Medhat Saidam, who had three daughters and a son, was pulled from the rubble of his home in Gaza City after an Israeli airstrike, his colleague Hasan Eljaish said.
Saidam specialized in burns, limb reconstruction and cleft palate.
He was like a big brother or a father to all his colleagues, whom he mentored in burn management at Al Shifa hospital, Eljaish said.
:: Hasan Eljaish, Plastic surgeon
"Becoming a plastic surgeon does not happen overnight, that someone can become capable of doing such work. This takes years. I believe that finding a replacement for Saidam in terms of his value and abilities, it will take years. It will take years - no less than ten to fifteen years to get someone with such experience."
Gaza had only five practicing plastic surgeons with the same experience and training, Eljaish said.
Another, Ahmad al-Maqadma, was killed in April in an Israeli raid on Al Shifa hospital, friends and colleagues said, so now there are three.
