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.
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."