Press Release

Foundation Helps Local Pediatric HIV/AIDS Program Stay Alive

Contact: Daniel Pryfogle
919.460.7069

San Francisco, Calif., Jan. 10, 2008 — The AIDS pandemic in Africa draws headlines, but the disease is still a critical issue closer to home, according to the director of the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Program at Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland.

“Support for the program has been dwindling as people think HIV and AIDS is no longer a crisis,” says Dr. Ann Petru, who has had to cut staff due to the loss of major funding. But the program, founded in 1983, continues to be vitally important to children and their families across Northern California.

“We still follow 80 HIV-infected infants and children and we evaluate another 35 to 45 each year who are born to HIV-infected mothers,” Petru says. “It takes a team to help the children and their families cope with this illness and optimize the care the children receive.”

Vesper Society, a San Francisco-based private foundation, has awarded Petru’s program a $20,000 grant to help ensure that its services continue.

“Vesper Society is engaged in addressing the AIDS crisis in Africa, but we are equally concerned about this issue here in California,” says Mary Baich, the foundation’s president and CEO.

“We believe that the children and families served by the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Program need ongoing support,” Baich adds, “and we encourage other individuals and groups to give generously to this critical effort.”

About Vesper Society:

Founded in 1965, Vesper Society is a faith-based private operating foundation that envisions a compassionate world which protects human dignity and enhances human potential. The Society’s mission is to promote social justice locally and globally by addressing critical social issues, including the provision of health services for the underserved. To learn more about Vesper Society, go to www.vesper.org.

About Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland:

Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland is Northern California’s only freestanding and independent children’s hospital. Children’s is the leader in many pediatric specialties, including neonatology, cardiology, neurosurgery and intensive care. The hospital is a designated Level 1 pediatric trauma center and has the largest pediatric critical care facility in the region. Children’s Hospital has 190 licensed beds, 201 hospital-based physicians in 31 specialties, more than 2,611 employees and an operating budget of $312 million. Children’s research arm, Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), has approximately 300 staff members and an annual budget of more than $49 million. The National Institutes of Health is CHORI’s primary funding source. The institute is a leader in translational blood diseases, developing new vaccines for infectious diseases and discovering new treatment protocols for previously fatal or debilitating conditions such as cancers, sickle cell disease and thalassemia, diabetes, asthma, HIV/AIDS, pediatric obesity, nutritional deficiencies, birth defects, hemophilia and cystic fibrosis.