Miami · A group of public health-care workers armed with two-pronged needles trained Friday to give smallpox vaccinations as part of a nationwide strategy to prepare for a potential bioterror attack.

The specter of terrorists quietly unleashing the deadly virus on city crowds has loomed large since last year's terrorist and anthrax attacks.

 

Friday's session is part of the state's plan to shield itself against such a scenario.

"The facts are that we're at war," said Dr. John Agwunobi, state health department secretary.

In addition to vaccine training, Agwunobi said health officials are working on a bioterrorism preparedness handbook for families that will soon be available at doctors' offices.

Smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1977, and routine vaccinations in the United States stopped in 1972. About half of the country's population is not immunized.

Federal officials are in the midst of devising a mass vaccination plan as a bioterror defense.

Mary Jo Trepka, director of epidemiology at Miami-Dade County's health department, said officials are grappling with ways to launch a safe, staggered immunization plan.

The vaccine's potentially deadly side effects means any immunization launch would cost lives. Out of every million people immunized, one or two would die, statistics show, and 15 would develop life-threatening complications.

For Miami-Dade's population of 2.4 million, Trepka said, that translates into two deaths and 2,000 people requiring medical care as a result of the vaccine.

At the session, the trainees partnered up and gave one another the mock shot.

Side effects can include muscle pain, fever, chills, and in more severe cases, severe skin rashes, brain swelling, and death. Marbury said the disease has a 30 percent mortality rate.