As the Federal Government awaits the arrival of 50,000 doses of the smallpox vaccine, health experts and officials are weighing the "low risk" of a bio-terrorism attack in Australia against the consequences of a vaccine known to cause serious side effects.
Mass vaccination of Australia's population is not on the agenda. At issue, says the Commonwealth's chief medical officer, Professor Richard Smallwood, is whether to vaccinate the nation's "front-line health and emergency workers before, or after, any possible threat of bio-terrorism from the release of the smallpox virus ... Every country is moving in a way which is aligned with the level of threat they perceive".
Smallwood says the Bali bombings have not influenced the national security agencies' assessment of Australia's risk of a bio-terrorist attack.
"We perceive that the level of threat of a bio-terrorism attack against Australia is low, so the first step is to get the vaccine in the country - the secondary question is who, if anyone, should need protection ahead of any incident."
Smallwood would not speculate on whether people such as the Prime Minister or
the Defence Force chief would be candidates for the vaccine: "At this stage the
focus would be more on those likely to be directly affected - it would be
focused on civilians rather than heads of government."