As wounded soldiers return home, they spread the infection to hospitals in their own countries which has led to civilian outbreaks and deaths.It has been linked to fatal outbreaks in NHS hospitals - in one case 93 people, 91 of them civilians were infected and thirty-five died. [1]

One strain of this "super-germ", the T Strain, has more genetic upgrades than any other single organism and is resistant to any antibacterial attempt to destroy it. It is harmless to healthy people and so medical staff who it colonises spread it from patient to patient, ward to ward, medical facility to medical facility and country to country. This infection can kill the injured, the ill, the young or elderly or those with a lowered immune system - with a death rate approaching 75% - various ways including pneumonia, fever, meningitis, spinal infections and septicaemia.
Israeli geneticists have engineered strains to bio-degrade oil spills as the bug is excellent at mining minerals from it's environment, such as iron from the human body.

At first the US military blamed the deaths on bad Iraqi soil getting into soldiers wounds - in fact there are still false reports stating this being released [2] It turned out the combat hospitals themselves were the cause of the soil. [3] Once this was proven, the US started underestimating the number of colonised soldiers, outbreaks and deaths. [4] Army doctors were advised how to deal the press - "Don't lie. Don't obfuscate. Don't tell them any more than you absolutely have to."



[1]  http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article1962456.ece
[2]  http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18094300&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=590581&rfi=6
[3]  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/enemy_pr.html
[4]  http://www.acinetobacter.org/