'It's been life-changing': Ramadan during UK lockdown

As an intensive care doctor, Usman Ahmed is spending much of Ramadan looking after patients. But working night shifts with other Muslim colleagues makes the experience easier, he says. At the start of each shift, Ahmed and his colleagues break their fasts together with food brought from home or donated by charities. Just before sunrise, they take another break to have breakfast and prepare for another day of fasting. “This Ramadan has been an emotional time for me and I have had to observe unwell patients in intensive care and an increased number of deaths in hospital,” says Ahmed, 34, who works at Whittington hospital in Archway, London. “This has an emotional strain and I have been reflecting upon this during Ramadan.”