Eight U.K. Doctors Died From Coronavirus. All Were Immigrants.

Being British-Sudanese in the 1980s was not easy. Race riots flared in cities across the country. Mosques were scarce. Dr. el-Hawrani went to school almost exclusively with white British classmates.

The young doctor quietly stood up for his family: When someone once tried to kill a 100-year-old fern in their garden by cutting out a ring of bark, Dr. el-Hawrani snapped off branches and nailed them across the gap so that nutrients could get across.

Still, discrimination bothered him. When it came time to follow his father into medicine, Dr. el-Hawrani told his brother that he “wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon but felt that maybe because of certain prejudices he didn’t get it.”

His resolve only grew stronger after an older brother, Ashraf, a fellow doctor, died at 29 of causes related to asthma. Dr. el-Hawrani discovered his brother’s body.

Before Dr. el-Hawrani’s death, on March 28, he had finally come around to the idea that his only son, Ashraf, named in his brother’s memory, would study English instead of the family trade. Ashraf said in a statement that his father “was dedicated towards his family.”

“Now he has to make his decisions about which university to go to on his own,” Amal el-Hawrani said of Ashraf. “He was expecting to have his father’s help.”

The coronavirus has taken a devastating toll on migrant doctors across Britain, leaving at least six others dead: Dr. Habib Zaidi, 76, a longtime general practitioner from Pakistan; Dr. Alfa Sa’adu, 68, a geriatric doctor from Nigeria; Dr. Jitendra Rathod, 62, a heart surgeon from India; Dr. Anton Sebastianpillai, in his 70s, a geriatric doctor from Sri Lanka; Dr. Mohamed Sami Shousha, 79, a breast tissue specialist from Egypt; and Dr. Syed Haider, in his 80s, a general practitioner from Pakistan.