Should individuals or health care providers be stockpiling antibiotics in case of a bioterrorist attack?
There are no public health recommendations for stockpiling of antibiotics by individuals or physicians. If a bioterrorist attack were to occur, local and state public health departments will be responsible for disseminating uniform treatment guidelines appropriate to the situation and for ensuring coordinated and rapid distribution of antibiotics to medical facilities, medical and other response personnel, and to exposed or ill members of the general public. The input of physician groups and hospital facilities is very important to local public health planning efforts for the distribution of pharmaceutical supplies if a bioterrorism event were to occur. We encourage physicians to join their hospital disaster planning committee and/or to contact their local health departments for more information. The federal government has assembled a National Pharmaceutical Stockpile (NPS) to supplement local and state resources. The NPS includes immediate response Push Packages that are caches of pha
