WHO Plans to Expand Smallpox Vaccine Stockpile

The World Health Organization plans to expand its stockpile of the smallpox vaccine in preparation for a possible terrorist attack using the pathogen, a senior organization official said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 24).

The organization now has 2.5 million doses of the vaccine. It hopes to create a significantly larger “virtual stockpile” by tracking world stockpiles that could be garnered in case of emergency, Brad Kay, coordinator of the WHO division on preparedness for accidental and deliberate epidemics, said yesterday at an Interpol conference on bioterrorism in France.

“The small amount [of smallpox vaccine] that the WHO has is not going to go far,” in a bioterror attack, Kay said (Jocelyn Gecker, Associated Press/Boston Globe, March 2).

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