During the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare and medical staff have put their own health and safety at risk to care for others. One such heroine is 25-year-old nurse Ketjona V., who works in a hospital in Durres, Albania’s second city.
It has been a tough year for Ketjona and her colleagues, who have all been working flat out to cope with the influx of patients affected by Covid: "It’s not easy to interact with patients who may have the virus. It wasn’t easy to cope with the fear of passing the disease onto loved ones," says Ketjona.
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While rightly proud of herself and her colleagues on the frontline, Ketjona does not regard herself as a heroine. And without the support of generous sponsors, she may never have been able to train and qualify as a nurse, graduating from the University of Tirana with a Masters qualification:
"I attribute my success to Mission Without Borders and the wonderful people who supported my family and my studies. My family is now able to support themselves financially, and I will be forever grateful to them and to our Lord."
"The help I received - financial, spiritual and emotional - was such a blessing for me and my family, enabling me to study at one of the best universities in Albania. While I loved my studies, it could also be exhausting – there were lots of long study nights alongside the practical placements in hospital."