Last Updated

05 Feb 2003

Source: Washington Post, April 12, 2002.

Spreading The Word About Anthrax

Drug Firms Enlisted To Educate Doctors

By Justin Gillis, Washington Post Staff Writer

Sales representatives for drug companies fanned out across 13 cities yesterday to provide doctors and other health-care workers with information about anthrax, part of an unusual campaign to heighten the nation's readiness for a bioterrorism attack.

The effort is the first phase of a program in which the nation's major drug companies have agreed to deploy their 80,000 salespeople on behalf of the government to try to reach every medical office in the land. The goal is to help educate hundreds of thousands of doctors and health-care workers to recognize the symptoms they might see in the early stages of a terrorist attack with biological weapons.

The plan was announced yesterday by Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of health and human services, who described it as a prime example of the cooperation between private business and public agencies that the government wants to foster in its anti-terrorism campaign.

"We in the Bush administration are doing everything we can to help our country prepare for what might happen should our adversaries strike again," Thompson said.

The basic idea is simple: Pharmaceuticals sales representatives, in the course of their regular visits to medical offices, will hand out color brochures -- complete with gory pictures -- designed to aid health workers in recognizing and treating anthrax.

Administrators of the program believe it will be more effective than mailing brochures would be. Drug company representatives tend to be welcome in doctors' offices and to get "face time" with the doctors on every visit -- not least because they provide the free samples of drugs that doctors love giving to their patients.

"My concern is that the farther we get from the attacks, the more people get complacent," said Julie Gerberding, an administrator at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "A tool like this helps remind people it's still an issue. It's just one more way of keeping the concept front and center."

The program began yesterday with a limited distribution of 20,000 anthrax brochures in 13 cities, including Washington, by representatives of four drug companies. After incorporating feedback from doctors to improve the brochure, drug companies will print hundreds of thousands for nationwide distribution.

Over the next year or two, that effort will be followed by additional brochures on smallpox and other bioterrorism agents. The drug companies will cover the cost.

Anthrax, used last fall, and other bioterrorism agents are extremely rare as naturally occurring diseases, and most doctors and nurses in the United States have never seen a case. However, their ability to recognize such an ailment is likely to be critical if the nation is attacked again. The more quickly an attack is recognized, the more rapidly the government will be able to deploy countermeasures, such as antibiotics or vaccines, that can limit the toll.

The cities in which the pilot program began yesterday are Albany, N.Y.; Boston; Chicago; Detroit; Hartford, Conn.; Indianapolis; Los Angeles; Miami; Nashville; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Tampa; and Washington. The drug companies participating in the pilot phase are Bayer AG, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Eli Lilly & Co. and Pharmacia Corp.

More than 20 companies are expected to join the program when it goes national, an outgrowth of a pledge by the industry last fall to assist the government in battling terrorism.