"Anthrax Vaccine Being Given to Troops Bound for the Persian Gulf"
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"Anthrax Vaccine Being Given to Troops Bound for
the Persian Gulf" Copley News Service (www.copleynews.com)
(10/19/02); Steele, Jeanette; Crawley,
James W.
On September 20, Marine Corps Headquarters
issued orders to resume anthrax immunizations among troops heading for Kuwait in
the first such widespread use of the vaccine since mid-2001 and a resumption of
the Pentagon's program to vaccinate selected military personnel among all four
services. Twenty-two hundred Marines of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit from
CampPendleton and the Miramar Marine Corps Air
Station will be among thousands of ground soldiers vaccinated prior deployment
to the Persian Gulf early next year. A shortage of the vaccine caused by
production compliance issues by BioPort, the sole manufacturer of the anthrax
vaccine in the U.S., forced a temporary suspension of the program last year.
In the meantime, military intelligence sources have assessed that anthrax
remains a very real threat to soldiers heading for the Middle East
and Southwest Asia.
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