Dr. Sabrina Bakeera Kitaka has headed a Mulago clinic for adolescent HIV positive patients for the past three years. But she does not just distribute ARVs. She dances. She sings. She hugs.

"She has a heart to really treat patients. You can tell she really feels for them," says Dr. Leo Mfitmana, who works with Dr. Kitaka in the paediatrics ward. "I want to reach her standard."

Kitaka has set a high standard in her personal approach to patients. She takes time to learn their names. "When you call patients by name, they trust you more. They tell you their problems, their little secrets," she says.

But she realises that her approach is not shared by many of her colleagues. "I think the attitude has to change," she says, referring to the way many doctors only address the physical problems in their patients, ignoring the psychological needs for reassurance and encouragement.

Still, Kitaka is pragmatic about why doctors fail to give patients the attention they need. "We get so overwhelmed," she says. "Acute care sees 400 people on a daily basis. If you are stressed at work, you are unlikely to see each patient as an individual human being."

If Kitaka is stressed, she rarely portrays it. She comes to work with her hair neatly tied back, wearing a pink flowery dress and heels that click as she walks swiftly down the paediatrician's ward to her office.

She peeks her head into the nurse's room to flash a smile, but doesn't linger. She passes by a young boy hopping on one foot and leans down and pats him on the back. "How are you?" she asks. She sees a mother dangerously carrying a patient on her back and she asks the doctor on duty to intervene.

It is Kitaka's caring yet professional manner that has made her a role model for her teenage patients - 70 per cent of whom said they wanted to be doctors in a recent survey evaluating their "hope for the future."

Restoring hope to patients - most of whom acquired the virus from their mothers as babies - is one of the goals of the adolescent clinic, which Kitaka helped launch two years ago.

Every Tuesday, the clinic gives free ARVs to around 100, 12 to 19-year-olds, who had felt out of place in the children's and adults' clinics. Adolescent HIV positive patients have needs that are different from children and adults. Unlike children, adolescent patients must be aware of their status, especially since they can spread the disease to others. However, Kitaka says adolescents need to be taught about how to protect themselves and sexual partners in a more sensitive way than adults.

"They want to be respected. They want people to believe in them. They want to be empowered in their own health care," says the mother of four.

"You really want to bring yourself down to their level so they don't feel that this is somebody we can't relate to," says Kitaka, who lets her patients bring boom boxes into the clinic. "You have to have a lot of energy."

Through dramas, dancing and games, the adolescents can interact with each other without feeling as they sometimes do around other children their age: "different" or "sick." Kitaka realises counselling is extremely important for HIV positive adolescents, which is why the clinic runs a peer support group and has several in-house counsellors.

Many HIV positive adolescent patients, a majority of whom acquired the virus from their mothers and a few who acquired it through intercourse or blood transfusions, feel stigmatised by their classmates. "Many of the kids say that they have a bad disease. They think that it's associated with promiscuity," Kitaka says. "Some children have refused to sit beside them."

Kitaka says a common misconception is that children who acquire Aids as babies won't live into the double digits. Those with slow progression HIV are living well into their twenties with ARVs, she says.

But for Kitaka, ARVs are not enough. She wants to address more than just the physical effects of the disease. "Many of the children are orphans," she says. "They're heading households and they don't have money for their school fees."

"How can you talk about hope for the future when you're giving them good health but you are not giving them financial support?" she says.

While the hospital does not have the money at the moment, Kitaka hopes to eventually secure funding or partner with an organisation to send HIV positive adolescents to technical schools. "That would be my wish," she says.

Kitaka is married with four children and has academic pressures as well. She teaches at the Mulago medical school and is currently in her third year of a fellowship with the Academic Alliance for Aids Care and Prevention in Africa. As part of the fellowship, she must travel to the U.S. for nine months every three years, work on research projects and act as a consultant for Mulago doctors.

But Kitaka has no plans of relocating to a new country. "I guess I'm patriotic," she says. "I feel my services are more needed here."

She also quit her job at a private clinic after three months because she felt she could be more useful at Mulago.

Despite her upbeat personality, Kitaka is not always able to take the challenges that come with her job in her stride. She finds it difficult when a patient dies, and her eyes fill with tears when asked about it.

"I always wonder what I could have done better. I consult with other doctors and colleagues and I ask them what should I have done?" she says. Kitaka says she shares her grief with her husband. "He gives me a lot of emotional support."

Although there are hardships, Kitaka finds her job extremely rewarding. "When you see a child who has been miserable rising up and gaining weight and starting to smile, you get so much personal satisfaction," she says.