Germ Warfare on vets?

[MacUser]

http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,162552,00.html

Sgt. David Emery lost one leg in February 2007 when a suicide bomber assaulted the checkpoint near Haditha, Iraq, where he and fellow Marines stood guard. Military surgeons were forced to remove his remaining leg when it became infected with acinetobacter baumannii-a strain of highly resistant bacteria that since U.S. forces began fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has threatened the lives, limbs, and organs of hundreds wounded in combat.

...Most striking about the problem is that men and women wounded in combat have acquired the bacteria in the very hospitals where aggressive surgery has, in many cases, saved their lives. "The outbreak," acknowledges a Defense Department fact sheet, "appears to have started during the care of patients (both U.S. military and non-U.S.) in the combat support hospitals of Iraq and Afghanistan."

... The persistence of the outbreak has pushed it to momentous proportions. "I believe this is the largest in-hospital acinetobacter outbreak in history," asserts Dr. Timothy Endy, a retired Army colonel now teaching infectious disease medicine

... Moreover, say scientists, nothing in the character of the outbreak would indicate that it originated as a result of intentional biological attack.

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Pray for our Men and Women Serving in these dangerous areas.