Doctors are becoming increasingly worried about a number of mysterious deaths in US hospitals, and now a link has been found with wounded soldiers returning from Iraq.

A new drug resistant form of a known pathogen has been discovered that is killing wounded soldiers at an alarming rate.

The bacterium known as Acinetobacter Baumannii has been traced from the US medical facilities in Baghdad, the hospital ship Comfort, the US military hospital in Germany and so on to hospitals in the US. Cases have also been identified in British and Canadian hospitals where wounded soldiers have been treated.

Wired magazine reports on the new life threatening problem doctors and soldiers are facing.

[Note the report is 4 pages long and as I can only post a little here do check out the link, it’s well worth reading. I will not add my own opinions on this topic as my knowledge of medicine is very limited but having read it, I feel it needs wider awareness]

The Invisible Enemy In Iraq
By Steve Silberman
02:00 AM Jan, 22, 2007

Forerunners of the bug causing the military infections have been making deadly incursions into civilian hospitals for more than a decade. In the early 1990s, 1,400 people were infected or colonized at a single facility in Spain. A few years later, particularly virulent strains of the bacteria spread through three Israeli hospitals, killing half of the infected patients. Death by acinetobacter can take many forms: catastrophic fevers, pneumonia, meningitis, infections of the spine, and sepsis of the blood. Patients who survive face longer hospital stays, more surgery, and severe complications.

Nevertheless, the bug makes an unlikely candidate for the next mass plague. It preys exclusively on the weakest of the weak and the sickest of the sick, slipping into the body through open wounds, catheters, and breathing tubes. Colonization poses no threat to people who aren't already ill, but colonized health care workers and hospital visitors can carry the bacteria into neighboring wards and other medical facilities. Epidemiologist Roberta Carey at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls acinetobacter the Rodney Dangerfield of microorganisms: "It doesn't get a lot of respect because it's not out there bumping off normal, healthy people." But lately the bacteria has been getting its due, because it is rapidly evolving resistance to all of the antibiotics that used to keep it in check.

Continues

A veterans' activist named Kirt Love helped Marcie create a Web site to raise public awareness of the outbreak, which launched in 2004 at www.acinetobacter.org. Email started pouring in. "After speaking with other family members at Brooke, I discovered that almost all of their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, had tested positive," wrote the mother of one infected soldier. Another message read: "An apparently healthy civilian registered nurse working in the ICU at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda has a life-threatening acinetobacter infection - Are other workers within the same environment equally at risk?"

Continues

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."

Additional References

http://www.acinetobacter.org/

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5345a1.htm

http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/biowissenschaften_chemie/bericht-24693.html

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/500681