Thirty-three million people worldwide currently have HIV, and each day 16,000 more become infected. Multidrug-resistant bacteria now threaten our hospitals and clinics, and transmission of resistant bacteria from animals to humans has become a reality. Pneumococcal bacterium, the main cause of pneumonia nationwide, continues to develop increasing resistance, and pneumonia is the No. 1 killer of ventilated patients in intensive-care units. Infections can still prove fatal for transplant patients, leukemia patients who have lost white blood cells, and children with cystic fibrosis. Indeed, infectious disease remains the leading cause of childhood death worldwide. The physicians and scientists in the Division of Infectious and Immunologic Diseases are at the forefront of confronting these problems, which affect not only individuals, but society at large.

Our clinicians provide primary care and consultant services for all major infectious diseases and serve as valuable information sources for the public-health community. In partnership with the Center for AIDS Research Education Services (CARES), division physicians care for many of the over 1,800 HIV-infected patients in the Sacramento area. An expanding research and clinical capability is transforming the center into a leading provider of state-of-the-art care, giving patients access to the latest treatment protocols and clinical trials of new therapies. Our physicians also offer a broad spectrum of diagnostic and therapeutic services, including immunization of individuals traveling to exotic locales and treatment of patients with emerging infections such as Lyme disease. As part of our care philosophy, we actively involve patients in decisions regarding their treatment.

Only prevention efforts and the discovery of an effective vaccine will truly stop the worldwide HIV epidemic. The division has been awarded a prestigious National Institutes of Health grant establishing a Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), where scientists are actively working to develop safe, effective HIV vaccines and new HIV treatments. We are also studying how to prevent hospital-acquired infections as well as the pathogenesis of peptic ulcers and gastritis, responses to a variety of vaccines, and the immune response to fungal pathogens. We use sophisticated techniques of DNA and RNA analysis, molecular biology and immunologic tools of flow cytometry and antibody manufacturing in our research. Close collaboration with our veterinary colleagues working on infections in animals will create new treatments for diseases that are transferred between animals and humans.

New diseases continue to emerge, due to both the increase in worldwide travel and the impact of humans on the environment. These diseases are little known to the general public except for the headlines - Group A streptococcus or "flesh-eating bacteria," Ebola virus, West Nile Virus, deadly arenaviruses, rabies, Haantavirus. And these lethal infections pale in comparison to the threat of bioterrorism with such agents as plague, anthrax or smallpox. We believe that we can curtail these diseases and provide solutions by working together with scientists at the laboratory bench as well as patients and the public health system.