Infection: A Destabilizing Threat
Just this past month, 49 students at two military academies in Taiwan reported positive for influenza A, with a total of 149 students sent home. Taiwan, the likely front of the next Asian conflict with America’s near-peer competitor in China, is one of the most challenged environments in the world – where the spread of an infection that hampers military preparedness could pose potentially devastating consequences.[1]
This week’s infection spread in Taiwan was not the first time which infection has rendered entire military units out of service: in World War II, nearly 18,000 U.S. Army personnel were removed from service daily from sexually transmitted diseases.[2] Later, in the Iraq War, military personnel reportedly brought countless deadly antimicrobial resistant bacteria home with them, compounded by complex infections in wounds.[3] In the COVID-19 pandemic, entire U.S. Navy warships were sidelined from infectious disease outbreaks – forcing the USS Milwaukee, a littoral combat ship, to remain in port, forgoing a critical deployment.[4] The USS Theodore Roosevelt, an Aircraft Carrier, was sidelined for two months in Guam after 1,000 sailors suffered through COVID-19.
If anything is clear, it’s that infectious disease poses a potentially devastating threat to military readiness in the United States and that of our allies. It’s why the U.S. Department of Defense continues to invest in the continued development of rapid diagnostic platforms to help manage the threat of infection.
The challenge: under the current standard of care, if an infection outbreak were to occur in a militarized environment, it may take days, significant costs, and countless complex medical interventions to identify the pathogen of concern and furthermore, identify the proper antibiotic to treat such conditions (or risk deepening the threat of antimicrobial resistance). Without proper and rapid diagnosis, disease outbreaks will continue to spread, oftentimes unknowingly and compounded by dense military housing conditions, but by the time detection and diagnosis occurs, it is too late to contain the spread.
This challenge is why the Department of Defense continues to invest in rapid diagnostics that can address the core infectious and weaponizable pathogenic threats, with additional Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing capabilities. GeneCapture is proud to be part of the effort to apply our innovations to infection detection, enabling quick action when an outbreak is noticed, to ensure a faster return to service for the warfighter, minimize risk and vulnerabilities, and support American readiness.
[1] https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202306130027
[2] https://www.med-dept.com/articles/venereal-disease-and-treatment-during-ww2/#:~:text=Two%20of%20the%20worst%20venereal,these%20two%20infections%20in%20particular.
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/us/troops-in-iraq-bring-resistant-bacteria-home.html
[4] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/24/navy-warship-milwaukee-covid-526138