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October 21, 2002
U.S. IMMUNIZATION NEWS
"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 Camp Pendleton 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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