Antibiotic-resistant bacteria on Pentagon's radar

The Pentagon figures prominently in President Barack Obama's new national plan to fight lethal, antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Under an executive order issued by the White House on Sept. 18, Obama outlined a national strategy to address the growing problem of illness and death caused by germs that can't be controlled with existing medications.

"The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria represents a serious threat to public health and the economy," Obama wrote. "Detecting, preventing, and controlling antibiotic resistance requires a strategic, coordinated, and sustained effort."

As part of the effort, the Pentagon will maintain a repository of resistant bacteria strains, update procedures for collecting, storing and cataloging germs, and work to develop new antibiotics and research experimental therapies for destroying bacteria.

The executive order brings together seven cabinet departments as well as other agencies to implement a five-year plan to address antibiotic overuse and misuse in the U.S.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause more than 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While the rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, infections in the U.S. military dropped 31 percent from 2005 to 2010, these skin infections continue to plague recruits as well as troops engaged in physically rigorous training, with about one in 10 recruits getting a skin infection that can delay training or lead to separation, according to the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center.

And more than one-third of U.S. troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan developed a bacterial or fungal infection as potentially life-threatening as their wounds.

The Department of Defense spends more than $40 million a year to support research and development of vaccines or medications to treat antibiotic-resistant illnesses as well as viruses that don't respond to any drugs.

In an August telephone interview with reporters on the topic of antibiotic resistance, Pentagon infectious disease experts said the rise of drug-resistant bacteria and fungi pose a global threat that can't be ignored.

"If it were easy to solve these problems, they would have been solved already," said Army Col. Michael Kozar, director for military infectious disease research at U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.

"The good news is, it's getting a lot of attention," he said.