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The doctor was gaunt, weary – and furious. Every day she faces a catastrophe for her community on a scale it’s hard to take in. The Â鶹Éç’s chief international correspondent Lyce Doucet introduced us to her in a television report earlier this week, and it was both sobering and humbling. Dr Mekkia Mahdi works in a poor town in north west Yemen. In a war described as ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis’, she cares for children in danger from air strikes, from bad water and from lack of food, and the battle is often a losing one. Tiny, skeletal figures tell their own story: ‘There are seven thousand malnourished children in my area alone,’ she blazed in anxiety and frustration - and their mothers are hungry as well. It’s easy to see doctors as cool, dispassionate figures, trained to be untouched by the suffering and the gore they live among. I was grateful for this glimpse behind the necessary mask of professional detachment. Often they’re found in the middle of war zones, like the astonishing Welsh trauma surgeon David Nott, who’s used his skills in just about every major conflict in the past 30 years, his work in Syria becoming legendary. He’s a driven man, and has literally saved unknown numbers – but not without considerable cost to his own health. When the young eye-specialist Li Wenliang warned fellow doctors of a possible outbreak of a respiratory syndrome in Wuhan a mere ten weeks ago, the Chinese authorities made him confess to publishing a false statement which disturbed public order. He was in fact one of the first people to recognise the outbreak of the coronavirus syndrome. He contracted it himself, and went on speaking out just days before his death, insisting, ‘There should be more openness and transparency.’ I thank God for people who care that much. Most front-line medics exposing themselves to such situations remain largely unknown. Some act from a basic humanitarian desire to alleviate suffering and to change the world; for others, the inspiration is rooted deeply in their understanding of God and what he wants for the people they serve. Faced with a pandemic, none of us can know what’s ahead. The prime minister warns starkly that: ‘Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.’ We may reasonably hope and pray that the worst fears will not materialise. But in the meantime, those in the health service and caring in our communities will be bearing even greater burdens than usual. We should take care to honour such people.