“Once you are top of your class and you are doing well in sciences, everybody assumes that you will become a doctor. For me, no one even asked if that was my preferred course, they just assumed it and so I went along with it,” says Dr Catherine Kyobutungi. The 48-year-old epidemiologist today promotes research on public health issues. She is the Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC) whose data helps shape public health policy.
“Straight after medical school, I was posted to a rural hospital in the middle of nowhere in Western Uganda and appointed as the Deputy Medical Superintendent. All of a sudden, I was handling patients, medicine, and staff. I worked for three years but it was exhausting.”
One reason why it was tiring was because of the broken systems that governed the way things were done.
“This was at the peak of the HIV epidemic and there were no ARVs. So we only treated patients for opportunistic infections. Some got better, some died and that became a cycle that was mentally draining,” she explains.
One experience that solidified her resolve to mend the system was from a woman who kept on losing babies to malaria.
“She was poor and believed that traditional herbs would help heal her children. She had lost four already, and she came to the hospital when her fifth born was critically ill,” she recalled.
Dr Kyobutungi advised the woman to purchase a mosquito net. “At the time, a net cost about Sh1,000. I advised her to prioritise it before settling the accumulated medical bills,” she says.
The one disappeared for quite some time. Then one day, the woman walked into the hospital two children in tow.
The woman had come to thank Dr Kyobutungi for treating her boy and guiding her on how to grow her family. This was the first time that she had had two surviving children at the same time.
“It’s the net that helped sustain the older boy until she gave birth to her second-born,” the researcher says.
A month after, Dr. Kyobutungi quit clinical practice to join Public Health. Her dream at the time was to work for the World Health Organization (WHO) from where she felt she could help push for changes in health policies.
“There were too many health issues at the time; we were even treating TB patients who had been misdiagnosed. The system was just not working. I felt like I would be more effective in public health than clinical practice if I could fix the system,” she says.
After quitting, she first taught at a medical school in western Uganda before winning a Masters’s scholarship to study in Germany. She then proceeded to do her PhD.
“As I was studying, I was shocked to learn that there was no data from Africa to refer to for every time we needed to sample statistics on how non-communicable diseases affected different populations. I kept asking myself how that was possible. By the time I was done with my PhD, I no longer had dreams of working with WHO. I wanted to fill that data gap,” she said.
That’s how she ended up in research and joined the African health research institution in 2006. She is now the Executive Director, a position she has held since 2017.
The center has for the fourth year in a row been ranked amongst globally leading think tanks by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Programme (TTCSP) which identifies and recognizes centers of excellence in policy research across the world.
“I still do research but I’m mostly offering leadership in research. My highlights include impacting policy change.”
She encourages more women to join medical research and avoid getting discouraged by the old societal perception that women are better as nurses. She believes women and men have similar brains and both can excel in science careers and urges them not to give room to the little voices that are planted at a young age to make them doubt themselves.
“Medicine is very hierarchical and the top pyramid is dominated by men but at no time should one let the imposter syndrome affect them. When I find myself in a room full of men, at times all-white and I am the only (black) woman, I remind myself that I am the expert in my field and that I have something to offer. To hell with everything else,” she points out.
She also wants career researchers in the field to gather enough strength to wade through the toxic work environment along the medical research hierarchy.
“Toxic work environment has ruined careers of both men and women but women are affected more. Most people are escaping a career in research for independent consultancy to avoid this,” she says.
The other challenge facing women who want to pursue careers in the sciences is the constant reminder of the need to start families. She advises women never to lose sight of who they are and not be carried away by the external voices reminding them that their reproductive age is fast fading.
She chose to start a family at the age of 38 when she gave birth to her firstborn child and last year at the age of 47, she gave birth to her second born.
“You can end up being everything but yourself. Being the best mum or worker is not you! Find a bigger purpose than just being,” she advises.
To the women struggling with making with the decision on whether to leave their three-year-olds behind after securing a scholarship abroad, she advises them to take up the opportunity.
“Children are resilient. If at home, I maximise on the time spent with the kids and if I come to work, let me work. It’s a balance, you have to be okay with whatever decision you make.”
