Infectious Diseases: Constant change with global implications
Today, the expertise of Children's Memorial spans 70 specialty areas, but in the earliest days of the hospital, there were only a few, and the treatment of infectious diseases was priority one. After all, contagious conditions once posed the greatest risk to children, and even led to the hospital's founding in 1882.
Since that time, many diseases that once plagued generations of children are no longer prevalent, because of the availability of vaccines and antibiotics. However, new infectious threats are always emerging.
“The field of infectious diseases is one of constant change with global implications,” says Stanford T. Shulman, MD, head of the Division of Infectious Diseases and director of the Center for Kawasaki Disease at Children's Memorial Hospital. Today's experts face a host of challenges, from new infectious diseases like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), to the threat of a pandemic flu outbreak, to the management of chronic diseases like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
The staff in the Division of Infectious Diseases mainly treats children with HIV, Kawasaki disease, bone and joint infections, complicated pneumonia and central nervous system infections (e.g., meningitis, encephalitis ), but they also care for those with rare or complex infections. “Due in part to our community's diverse population, we see children with incredibly complicated infections, including tropical diseases like malaria, typhoid fever and dengue fever.”
Children's Memorial is internationally renowned for its leadership in pediatric infectious diseases, with a team of experts whose research, education and advocacy efforts are benefiting children everywhere.
Shulman, also a professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, is considered one of the foremost experts in the world in the treatment of Kawasaki disease, the leading cause of acquired heart disease in children. He says that his colleague, Anne Rowley, MD, attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases, and professor of pediatrics and microbiology/immunology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine is “leading the world in getting closer to discovering the cause of Kawasaki disease.”. Shulman and Rowley have authored scores of articles and book chapters on Kawasaki disease.
In the care of HIV-infected children, Children's Memorial has the largest and most comprehensive pediatric and adolescent program in the Midwest. Ellen G. Chadwick, MD, and Ram Yogev, MD, both attending physicians in the Division of Infectious Diseases, have served as co-directors of the Section of Pediatric, Adolescent and Maternal HIV/AIDS since it was established in 1987. Chadwick also serves as Children's Memorial's associate chair for education and Yogev is the director of the experimental therapeutics program and Center for HIV/AIDS Research at Children's Memorial Research Center .