Krista Dong

Krista Dong is the director for a program called Integration of TB in Education and Care for HIV/AIDS (iTEACH) based in KwaZulu-Natal South Africa. She has worked in International Health focusing on HIV/AIDS and TB since 1991, from Gambia and South Africa to Indonesia. She is on faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) / Harvard Medical School where she completed her Infectious Disease Training. For several years, Dong helped hundreds of destitute HIV-positive adults and children in Durban, South Africa at the iThemba Family Care Center. As a founding physician, she developed a program that incorporated local beliefs, cultural practices and at-home visits into traditional HIV/AIDS treatments, making them more successful. The South African government is now replicating her programs in other provinces. Originally drawn to the AIDS crisis after the deaths of several friends during the early 1980s, Dong is interested in continuing her HIV work in developing countries. “Once patients accept their illness and are empowered to understand it, then they can choose life,” she said in a recent interview.