The Department provides the bacteria and fungus inspections, and the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases and general medicines mainly, and supports a variety of diagnosis, medical treatment and consultation of infectious diseases. Some features of the Department are described as follows:

Fever of unknown origin is defined as: 1) higher than 38.3°C body temperature, 2) fever for more than 3 weeks, and 3) unknown origin through the hospitalization and examination for a week. Depended on the patient characteristics, FUO can be classified to 4 categories: typical FUO, FUO related to hospitalization, FUO with neutropenia, and FUO related to AIDS.

According to statistics, the most diseases leading FUO are infectious diseases (30~40%), followed by malignant tumors (20-30%), autoimmune diseases (such as lupus erythematosus) and some uncommon diseases. However, the cause cannot be discovered for about one tenth patients.

The diagnosis of FUO shall be examined by the physicians in detail. Moreover, the patients shall provide their history, including their family history, previous illness, recent travel history, possible exposure in workspace, animal feeding or contacts, insect bites, used drug, unsafe sex, etc.

Although hospitals try to maintain the environmental safety, the infections for patients during or after their hospitalizations cannot avoided completely. In the United States, the nosocomial infections lead the death of 90 million people and USD 5 billion loss in a year.

Self-infection, known as endogenous infection, refers to the pathogen from the patient's own infection. The long-term use of antibiotics, immunosuppressive agents or hormones may decrease the patient's systemic resistance and cause the self-infection. For example, the staphylococci infected in wounds comes from the patient’s skin, the streptococcus comes from the mouth, and the gas gangrene and tetanus come from the intestine. In addition, the long-term use of antibiotics may cause dysbacteriosis and the abnormal proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria in some parts of body to develop a new infection, such as the pathogenic E. coli enteritis.

Hospital infection, known as nosocomial infection or hospital acquired infection, refers to an infection occurred in a hospital. The scope of infection can be divided into a variety of patients, hospital personnel and visitors. Generally, the types of hospital infection can be classified into 4 types:

The exogenous infection (cross infection) refers to the infection caused by the direct or indirect infection between patient and patient or between patient and personnel of hospital.

The iatrogenic infection refers to the infection caused by the poor disinfection of the instruments, materials and places or impure prepared agents during the diagnosis, treatment or prevention process.

The infection carried into the hospital refers to the infection caused by a patient who has been in the incubation period of another infectious disease before hospitalization and onsets and infects to other patients after hospitalization. For example, a dysentery patient who has been infected with mumps before hospitalization onsets the disease after hospitalization so that the mumps is spread in the hospital.

The CMUH has reaches outstanding performance in the prevention of nosocomial infections and the treatments of unavoidable infections.

Our researches also aim at some special nosocomial infections, such as those caused by various catheters and ureters. They have provided the best solutions of prevention or treatment for these infections.

According to the statistics of Centers for Disease Control, the number of people infected with HIV/AIDS have risen at a rate of 20% in the past 2 to 3 years. Moreover, the number of the infected adolescent is increased significantly. As a result, the age of infected people has been getting younger.

The CMUH is the one of twenty large-scale hospitals appointed by the Centers for Disease Control to provide the anonymous screening for HIV/AIDS. 

The purpose of anonymous screening and counseling for HIV/AIDS is to help AIDS patients in early diagnosis and treatment. Based on the results, the subjects can understand their physical conditions, and then prevent and reduce the chances of infection.

For the safety and privacy of people receiving the screening and counseling, the CMUH provides a quiet, comfortable and hidden space to provide the service. In addition to blood tests, the CMUH will assess the peoples’ risk of behaviors, clarify the window period, and provide the health education of HIV/AIDS. If necessary, it will provide appropriate referrals for the people to relevant medical units, in order to reduce the risk factors as well as to change the pattern of dangerous behavior.