The U.S. military’s evacuation chain that removes wounded soldiers from combat, while effective at saving lives, has helped give rise to an antibiotic-resistant superbug that has spread to civilian hospitals in the U.S. and Europe.
Wired:
As the bacteria spread through hospitals in the US and Europe, the DOD worked overtime to keep a lid on the rumors. In a PowerPoint presentation about acinetobacter and pneumonia delivered at the US Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, a slide labeled “How to handle the press” read: “Don’t lie. Don’t obfuscate. Don’t tell them any more than you absolutely have to.”
Quietly, in spring 2004, a group of military doctors, infectious-disease specialists, and microbiologists decided to find out what was really going on with this bug. “My concern was that we were changing the bacterial environment in our hospitals, and I wasn’t seeing a whole lot being done about it,” says Tim Endy, the former communicable-disease research director at Walter Reed. “And now there were infections in patients who had never been to Iraq. The potential consequences to health care and to the cost of health care are huge.”
The bills for imipenem use were soaring at Walter Reed, and each dose of the drug contributed to the snowballing resistance of the bacteria. Endy drafted a paper that became the catalyst for a full-fledged epidemiological consultation (an epicon, in military-speak) under the authority of the Army Surgeon General. Dozens of infectious-disease experts joined the investigation, along with academic researchers and epidemiologists from the CDC.
The task force sent field teams into Iraq and Kuwait to gather soil samples, swipe stretcher handles, and scour chow halls. When a storm dumped sand onto the decks of the Comfort, they swabbed the gunwale. To put the IED theory to the test, they took samples of bacteria from the dirty wounds of soldiers as they were admitted to the Ibn Sina. They also analyzed soil archived by the DOD before the war began.
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Jump to Comments
By Bukko in Australia, January 26, 2007 at 4:59 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Not as scary as it sounds. Acinetobacter is not easily transmissible. At the hospital where I work, patients with it are on contact isolation. However, aside from having it in their systems, acinetobacter doesn’t cause any symptoms in them. They don’t get it in their lungs, it doesn’t make their flesh rot, and I haven’t seen anyone get it in their brains. The infectious disease literature I’ve read says it does not spread to those who have good immune systems. I don’t dispute the sad fact that the soldier mentioned in the link died from this, but I don’t think it’s going to spread through hospitals and kill everyone.
As you say, Eleanore, there are many antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospitals. Some of the old scary ones are now essentially ignored. Take MRSA (methycillin resistant staphylococcus aureua). It used to be that patients with MRSA (as opposed to susceptible staph) were put on “contact isolation.” That means nurses had to put on gowns before going into their rooms, they could not mix with other patients, they got intravenous infusions of a powerful but dangerous antibiotic named vancomycin… Now it’s like “Eh, they have MRSA. So what? Everybody does.” I hope they do that with VRE (vancomycin resistant enterococcus) because the Green Party part of me gets sick of wasting a dozen blue plastic gowns each shift to protect against a butt bug that causes NO symptoms.
Report thisBy TheEnd, January 26, 2007 at 2:07 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
You know, this story only goes to show that the old idea that war provides residual gains is totally Full of Sh$t. Maybe once upon a time that was true, but these days it’s contributed to an approx. 9 trillion dollar national debt, a strongly divided and anxiety ridden citizenry, a sullied public face in the world community, and now drug resistent super bugs. Hmm, anyone else think we’ve stayed far too long in the land of diminishing returns on this war thing? Maybe we shouldn’t do it so much
Report thisBy Quy Tran, January 25, 2007 at 6:30 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
This kind of bacteria will cover the whole country’s conscience when Bush/Cheney are still sitting in haughty manner at their damned thrones
Report thisBy Eleanore Kjellberg, January 25, 2007 at 4:17 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
“Army surgeons there repaired Gadsden’s cranium, removed his injured spleen, and pumped him full of broad-spectrum antibiotics to ward off infection”
Scary info--intensive antibiotics create resistant bacteria, unfortunately this has been an ongoing problem in all hospitals.
2 million patients get health care associated infections each year
Report this100,000 deaths from health care/hospital infections each year
$30 billion spent to treat health care/hospital infections each year