Director, Pediatric Infectious Diseases

Director, Pediatric HIV/AIDS Program

Infection Control Officer

Chair, Medical Ethics and Infection Control Committees

UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland

Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, UCSF School of Medicine

Ann Petru, M.D., is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego (Revelle College), where she studied Biology and French Literature.  She attended and graduated from the UCSF School of Medicine, Class of '78.  She did a 3-year Pediatric Residency, a 2-year Chief Residency, and a 2-year Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship, all at Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland, now doing business as UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland (UBCHO).   She has been working in the Division of Infectious Diseases since 1983.  She became the division’s director in May 2007.  Together with 5-6 other physicians, she shares the responsibility for diagnosing and caring for children with all sorts of suspected and proven infectious diseases.

Professional Work: Dr. Petru participates on various hospital committees and chairs the Medical Ethics Committee since 1997 and the Infection Control Committee since 2008.  She has been actively teaching in the largest pediatric residency program in the Bay Area and has developed a very busy, fully integrated and comprehensive center for the care of children with HIV infection.  The Pediatric HIV/AIDS Program (PHAP), started in 1986 by Dr. Petru, has provided care for over 300 HIV-infected infants, children and adolescents and about 800 HIV-exposed infants born to infected mothers.

The PHAP includes Dr. Petru, two nurses and a social worker. From 1989 until early 2007, the PHAP and the Pediatric Immunology group at UCSF participated jointly in the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group (PACTG), funded by the National Institutes of Health.  Through the PACTG, clinical trials for children with HIV were available, starting with the first studies of AZT in children in 1989.  About 225 children at UBCHO entered onto many different studies.  Although the PACTG closed in early 2007, much was accomplished during those 17-18 years.  The clinical trials offered at UBCHO included (1) new drug (antiretroviral) treatment trials (starting with AZT alone and eventually including different combinations of 16 currently available drugs used for HIV management); (2) studies to determine which drugs to use and whether to provide or even stop medications to prevent opportunistic infections; (3) studies of new immunizations for children with HIV; and (4) long-term observational studies to determine what happens to children who have received drugs for HIV disease. 

Because the drug therapies have been so successful for so many patients, children are living much longer.  The PHAP is currently following 40 HIV-infected children and adolescents and about 10-15 other infants born to HIV-infected mothers each year.  There are fewer new infected infants now (because of improved maternal identification and interventions to decrease the risk of transmission to exposed babies), so >95% of newly referred infants are eventually proven to be free of infection.  In addition, hardly any of our children and teens with HIV infection need hospitalization. Our hope is to continue to provide comprehensive care to all of our patients and to watch them grow up, finish their education, and become productive members of our society.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck worldwide. Dr. Petru was the “medical/technical specialist” assigned to assist the hospital in all such aspects of its response to the pandemic, including monitoring infections in our community, addressing proper isolation and protection for staff, patients and family members in the hospital and helping to establish a testing program for children in the East Bay.  This demanded tremendous attention, cooperation with the administration, medical staff, and employees, and was a constantly changing process as the pandemic has progressed.  

Personal Activities:  Dr. Petru lives in Oakland, and has two grown children, Emily (a family medicine physician in Seattle with 2 young children) and Stephen (a high school athletic director in Oakland, who also has his own photography business).  She loves spending time with her family, taking photographs, walking in nature, working in her garden, and oversees both a large adult swimming program and a growing weekend hiking group based out of UBCHO.  She really loves her work (a mostly perfect combination of clinical care for patients, teaching of fellows, residents and medical students, and providing access to answers through clinical research).