January 15, 2003 BERLIN (AP) -- The German government said Wednesday it plans to stockpile enough smallpox vaccine by the end of the year to protect the whole population of 82 million from a terrorist attack with the virus.
The government has 36 million doses of the vaccine and will increase that to 100 million this year, Health Minister Ulla Schmidt said. The program's cost has been estimated at up to 160 million euros.
Schmidt emphasized it was being launched as a precaution, not in response to a specific threat.
"We all hope that we will never be forced to use the vaccine," he told reporters.
Authorities would begin a vaccination program the moment a smallpox case appears anywhere in the world, beginning with health and emergency workers, Schmidt said.
Germany launched the vaccine purchases after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, buying 25 million doses in 2001. Another 11 million were procured last year, 30 million more are to be delivered by April and the rest are to follow by the end of this year.
Smallpox, which has historically killed about 30 percent of its victims, last appeared in nature in Somalia in 1977 and was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1979.
All stocks of smallpox virus were supposed to have been destroyed except for samples in two official labs in Russia and the United States. But experts fear hostile nations or terrorist groups may have the virus and could use it in an attack.
In another precaution, German environment minister Juergen Trittin said he would meet state and industry leaders shortly to discuss an expert report on how to protect the country's 19 nuclear power stations are from an attack similar to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
He refused to say whether the safety review could lead Germany to speed up a program to close down its nuclear power plants over about two decades.
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