Story By:  Gheorghi Caraseni, Sub Editor:  Joseph Golder,  Agency: Central European News

This young Romanian WPC who just graduated from the police academy and thought she had the coronavirus was shocked when doctors told her she has acute leukaemia instead.

The devastating result came after Ramona Elena Toapa, 20, had started patrolling the streets from the 25th Bucharest Police Section in the Romanian capital, and started feeling unwell.

She had just graduated from police academy at the end of last year, and was frequently on patrol around the city streets helping to make sure people kept social distancing, and respected lockdown rules.

As a result, when she started to get a high temperature of over 40 degrees Celsius, she suspected she had been infected with the coronavirus, and was taken by ambulance to hospital.

When the results came back negative and the fever continued, doctors carried out further tests, and then gave her the bad news that she had acute leukaemia.

Not only is the disease far more serious, it also needs chemotherapy to treat it which would leave her with a decimated immune system and even more at risk from a coronavirus infection.

For the moment, Ramona is hospitalised in the Haematology Clinic of the University Hospital where treatment has already started in the form of blood transfusions.

She is being supported by her colleagues, who have appealed on social media for blood donors.

Brasov policeman, Marian Godina, was one of those backing the campaign saying: “This young police officer is still a kid, she is just 20-years old. She worked mostly in the streets and acted entirely according to protocol when she felt ill, and an ambulance court was called.

“You can imagine how shocked she was, as we were, when we found out that she had an even worse disease than the suspected coronavirus. Please donate blood to this young girl to save her life.”

The response to the police appeal has been spectacular, with dozens of locals during up-to-date blood in the hope that some of them might help with Elena’s treatment.

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