Tendani Gaolathe

As a young girl, Dr. Tendani Gaolathe lived near Princess Marina Hospital in the city of Gaborone, Botswana. She had a child’s normal curiosity about the hospital, but the idea of medicine as her life’s work did not take hold until she spent one year of national service in a bush settlement in the Kalahari Desert. “There was no one to medically care for these people. A nurse would visit once a month, and I would do whatever I could to help the sick between her visits, but if there was an emergency, the patient would have to be sent to the clinic 42 kilometers away.”

Frustrated by her inability to heal the sick, she returned home aspiring to be a physician. “I left the settlement feeling that I had to do something for them and others in the same situation,” she said. After two years at the University of Botswana, where she studied Biology, she transferred to George Washington University in the United States, earning a BS degree in Zoology in 1992.

Tendani knew the road to a medical degree would be difficult. “There were no medical school in Botswana, and I did not find opportunities in the United States,” she said. A premedical advisor gave her information about the School of Medicine at St. George’s University. She applied and was accepted into the August 1992 entering class.

Upon graduation from St. George’s University School of Medicine, Tendani went to work as a medical officer at Princess Marina. She then returned to the United States where she completed a three-year residency in Internal Medicine at St. Michael’s Medical Center in New Jersey.

In January 2002, the country’s first anti-retroviral drugs (ARV) clinic opened at Princess Marina Hospital with Tendani appointed as Interim Director. More than 800 patients were treated in the first half of the year. She is currently Co-Director of the Infectious Disease Care Clinic and Director of the Harvard School of Public Health Master Trainer Corps Program in Botswana.

“St. George’s University gave me a lifetime opportunity to become a medical doctor,” said Dr. Tendani Gaolathe. “I am very grateful for my education and for the chance to give to my country.”

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