A Life of Advocacy and Mentorship
As a result of the stigma around HIV and AIDS, Ann and her team spend much of their time instilling a sense of self-worth into patients who might otherwise lack it. “They’ve been told that you can’t let anyone get exposed to your blood, you can’t live in a community with other people because people will be afraid of you,” she says. A number of her patients from China, for example, were isolated from their communities and placed into special orphanages for children who were born with the disease. One orphanage was forced to pack up and move overnight when word got out that all of the kids who lived there had HIV. “It takes a long time for us to convince them that they’re good people, that they have good potential, that they can go to school and learn,” she says. The success stories that come from Ann’s work are abundant. She talks about one patient who immigrated to America after losing her mother and brother in Ethiopia. “She graduated from high school, college, and went to graduate school for a degree in social work,” Ann says proudly. “Now she’s taking care of homeless youth in Southern California. This kid lost so much in her home country and here she is giving to the world.”
Giving Back to the World
As the child of a Holocaust survivor, Ann understood from an early age that life can be quite cruel to people. Upon finishing medical school, she came to the realization that while she had spent her 20s studying medicine, her mother had been locked in a concentration camp when she was that age. “The day I graduated from medical school, I learned that if my mother had not been in a concentration camp, she would have become a doctor,” Ann says. “In a way, I’ve lived out her legacy.” Ann’s own legacy is a generous one. Both of her adult children have inherited her sense of public service and
Ann Petru, MD has a long history of treating children with infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital Oakland. She is also a longtime clinical scientist at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Children’s research arm. Dr. Petru can discuss many topics related to pediatric infectious diseases including antibiotics, “Staph” and “Strep” infections, bacterial meningitis, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), Entero virus, Ebola virus, and other viral diseases. However, her primary focus is treatment of children with HIV/AIDS and preventing transmission of HIV from mothers to their babies.Dr. Petru provided care for the first pediatric HIV/AIDS case in the Bay Area in 1983. In 1986, she started the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Program, which has treated more than 800 HIV-infectedand HIV-exposed infants, children and adolescents. Many of her patients were among the first to participate in AZT treatment and other clinical trials. These groundbreaking studies allowed her and her staff to evaluate many drug combinations for HIV management, new immunizations for children with HIV, and the long-term effects on children receiving drugs for HIV disease. Because drug therapies have been so successful, children are living much longer. Improved maternal drug therapies reducing transmission of HIV from mothers to their children, means there are now fewer infants born to HIV-infected mothers. Individuals wishing to support Ann’s work can do so here (https://give.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/landing/ways-togive). Click “give now” and select “other” in the “I want my funds to support” section. A field will pop up where you can enter “Dr. Ann Petru.”
desire to help people. Her daughter works as a family medicine doctor at community clinics and her son is the athletic director for a high school. “They’re both just wonderful people,” she says. “They got it.” She tells one story of her son speaking out against the expulsion of student from the soccer team due to misbehavior. “My son advocated for him because this is a boy who has no support at home,” she explains. “What keeps this kid going to school is that he loves soccer, so my son is his support.” The hospitality of her family reflects Ann’s own philosophy on life. “It’s not about making money. It’s not about traveling and seeing the world,” she says. “People need to look at what’s happening around them and find something that’s important. Take care of someone who no one else wants to care of. We really need to look after one another.” n
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