Flora Brovina

Poet, pediatrician, women’s rights activist? Who is Flora Brovina? It was on 30 September 1949 that Flora Brovina was born in the town of Skënderaj (Serb. Srbica) in the Drenica Valley of Kosova (Kosovo), the now well-known Albanian region of what was once Yugoslavia. She was raised in Prishtina where she went to school and began studying medicine. After finishing her university studies in Zagreb, where she specialized in pediatrics, she returned to Kosova and worked for a time as a journalist for the Albanian-language daily newspaper Rilindja. Soon thereafter, she returned to her true profession and calling of health care and worked for many years in the Pediatrics Ward of the Prishtina General Hospital. These few words suffice to describe what would normally be regarded as an average life, a tranquil existence. But in fact, the life of Flora Brovina is that of an extraordinary woman confronted by unusual circumstances, not least by the struggle of her people for freedom.