"Operation Medicine Delivery" (Minneapolis - St. Paul) VIDEO

PDF Flyer, etc.
[link to www.echominnesota.org]

[link to www.startribune.com]


"The exercise, dubbed "Operation Medicine Delivery,'' has united the Minnesota Department of Health with the U.S. Postal Service to answer questions that have plagued public health officials since the terror attacks of 9/11. What if an airborne anthrax attack struck the Twin Cities? How would millions of Minnesotans get the medicine to survive?

More than 300 mail carriers will participate in the test, fanning out across four neighborhoods in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Robbinsdale and Golden Valley. They plan to reach 37,000 households in four ZIP codes: 55101, 55102, 55411 and 55422.

The overall goal of the exercise would be to deliver preventive doses of medication to most people within the first 48 hours of a bioterror attack, though much of that would happen through local medicine dispensing sites run by area public health organizations. During an actual bioterror crisis, the couriers would be alerted through an automated phone message.

The exercise, funded through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Postal Service, will spark an intense period of evaluation, when health officials will finally see if the idea could work under the most catastrophic public health conditions.

The tactic has been tested on a smaller scale in Boston, Philadelphia and Seattle, but the Twin Cities experiment will be its first full-scale test."