As a young girl, Dr Jane Achan had no intention of studying science.

“My dream job was working as a bank teller. I admired those ladies behind the bank counters very much,” Dr Achan said.

But her high school teachers at Mount St. Mary’s College at Namagunga, Uganda, had other ideas.

After her O levels, she was offered a place in the school for A levels on condition that her combination of subjects was pure science.

“I rejected the offer and urged my family to launch an official complaint. The school stood its ground and because I wanted to study there, I had no option but take up biology, physics and chemistry instead of my desired maths, economics and geography that would have landed me a job in a bank,” Dr Achan said.

Although Dr Achan started out a reluctant student, she excelled in what she did.

“Because I did not have much confidence in myself as a science student, I worked very hard. I ended up performing so well that I was admitted at Makerere University to study medicine from 1992 to 1997,” she said.

After her internship at Mulago Hospital, she worked in both private and government facilities before returning to Makerere for a master’s degree in paediatrics and child health from 2001 to 2004.

“Two things made me study paediatrics. First, as an intern, I observed a lot of suffering in the paediatric ward and felt that specialising in this field would enable me to do something to alleviate this suffering. Second, my mentor, Dr Edson Mworozi, shaped my decision by the way he skillfully handled patients and his depth of knowledge in the field,” Dr Achan said.

Dr Achan, 37, is president of the Uganda Paediatric Association, as well as a lecturer in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the Makerere University College of Health Sciences.

She is also an investigator with the Makerere University – University of California San Francisco (MU-UCSF) Research Collaboration, through which she is running several studies evaluating interactions between HIV and malaria.

The results of her work will inform health ministries in countries with high HIV and malaria, on better ways of protecting children from illness.

In 2009, Dr Achan was awarded an institutional scholarship from the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium for her PhD studies. She is studying how different treatment approaches for malaria improve outcomes in children.

Dr Achan and colleagues at the MU-UCSF Research Collaboration have embarked on a study of the interactions between HIV and malaria among children under five year in Tororo, where malaria transmission is very high and the HIV prevalence among children is 9.5 per cent.

In Uganda alone, malaria kills between 70,000 and 110,000 children annually.

The study is investigating whether the use of Lopinavir (from a group of drugs called HIV protease inhibitors) in anti-retroviral therapy (ART) will reduce malaria compared with using ARTs without Lopinavir.

Laboratory experiments have shown that Lopinavir reduces the growth of malaria parasites.

Dr Achan’s work will investigate whether HIV infected children on Lopinavir ARTs are less prone to malaria compared to children that are on ARTs without Lopinavir.

Dr Achan has two young children and says balancing both work and family responsibilities can be tricky.

“Once I had carried work home and my four-year old came and shut my computer down, telling me ‘That’s enough work for today, let your teacher punish you tomorrow because now we want to play with you.’ Since then, I may carry work home but I only start on it when the children have gone to sleep,” she said.

When she travels, her extended family takes care of the children.

“Science is very rewarding, especially when you start to see the impact of your work,” said Dr Achan, who enjoys traveling, reading magazines and spending time with family.

“Surprisingly, I do not miss the bank job at all and thoroughly enjoy teaching and sharing the knowledge and experience gained over the years; this is indeed a noble profession.”