Alarming Trend: Superbug Spreads To Civilians

The February issue of Wired magazine discusses an alarming epidemic of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the US combat-support hospitals in Iraq that has spread into civilian hospitals in the US and Europe. Steve Silberman, a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, writes a story on the first in-depth media investigation of an epidemic of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the US military healthcare system during the Iraq war.

He writes: "Since Operation Iraqi Freedom began, more than 700 US soldiers have been infected or colonized with an organism called Acinetobacter baumannii that targets highly vulnerable patients in hospitals -- including the elderly, newborns, people with depressed immune systems, and wounded soldiers themselves. (A number of British and Canadian soldiers, as well as numerous Iraqi civilians, have also been infected.) For a long time, government officials have claimed that the source of this bacteria is the Iraqi soil, blown into soldiers' wounds by IED attacks. Interviews with current and former military medical staff, and the Defense Department's own internal reports, however, reveal that the primary source of these infections is bacterial contamination of healthcare facilities along the heroic "evacuation chain" that transports wounded soldiers home from war. This bacteria has already spread into civilian hospitals in the US and Europe, where several civilians have died. A chilling example of bacterial evolution at work, demonstrating the need for developing new types of antibiotics. "For an aspiring superbug, war is anything but hell."