When international aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) approached Queenstown nurse Maia Blenkinsop to ask her to go to Ukraine on a medical aid assignment and be ready to leave in two weeks, she said she could not. “But I can be ready in three weeks,” she replied bravely.
As early has her teens, Maia, 42, dreamed of being a humanitarian aid worker after reading an inspiring book, which is how she found herself in South Sudan with MSF in 2020. But Ukraine was an even better fit for the Canadian-born nurse
