In Memoriam: Sandy Ford (1950–2015)

age. To her children, she was a loving mother; to her co-workers, she was a caring human being and dedicated public health worker; to the world, she was a herald of the AIDS epidemic, playing a major role in alerting the world to the onset of this epidemic. In January 1979, Sandy took a position in the Parasitic Diseases Division in the Centers for Disease Control, now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Her job was to respond to requests for drugs that CDC provided through the Parasitic Diseases Drug Service (PDDS). These drugs had been unavailable in the United States. By complying with the Food and Drug Administration’s rigorous requirements for investigational new drugs, CDC was able to import and dispense these drugs and fill a therapeutic gap. One of the 10 drugs in the armamentarium of the PDDS was pentamidine isethionate, which was intended to treat rare, imported cases of African trypanosomiasis. An unanticipated need for pentamidine was its use in treating Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, now known as Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia or Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP). Pentamidine had replaced sulfa drugs as the treatment of choice for PCP, which had been occurring mainly in infants and children with primary and secondary immune deficiencies and in adults receiving immunosuppressive drugs. Demand for pentamidine was brisk. Sandy interacted skillfully with hundreds of clinicians across the United States to provide life-saving pentamidine to severely ill patients, and she kept very careful records. She relished the opportunity to help physicians, and she cared deeply about their ill patients. She wanted to be known as a drug technician, a title she coined for herself. On numerous occasions, she said how much she loved her job. In early 1981, Sandy noticed an increase in the number of requests for pentamidine to treat cases of PCP. The cases were unusual because they were in adult male patients, a departure from the usual cases in children. In one instance, a New York physician asked for a second course of pentamidine to treat a patient with PCP who had not