The world’s largest package delivery firm is preparing to test a US service that dispatches nurses to vaccinate adults in their homes.

This toolkit helps you work with key stakeholders to develop methods for the dispensing of medical countermeasures (such as antibiotics, antivirals, vaccines, and supplies) during public health emergencies involving public health agencies, hospitals, long term care facilities, and pharmacies.

This document presents a set of recommended standards for mass antibiotic dispensing that focus on the “points of dispensing” (or PODs, locations where the members of the public would go to receive life-saving antibiotics or other medical countermeasures during a large-scale public health emergency). Specifically, the standards address (1) the number and location of PODs, (2) internal POD operations, (3) POD staffing, and (4) POD security.

Per a directive from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) large metropolitan regions have been tasked with delivering medication to the public within 48 hours after notification of a biological emergency event. Dispense Assist supports public health agencies with accomplishing this mission by providing an online screening tool that allows users to generate vouchers for medication.

This document outlines key topics, relevant resources, and current promising practices state and local medical countermeasure (MCM) planners should consider when creating and implementing plans to transition emergency mass dispensing operations from the initial 10-day antibiotic distribution and dispensing effort to distributing and dispensing extended post-exposure prophylactic MCMs.

Even medicines that are years past their expiration date and haven’t always been kept in strict climate-controlled conditions may still retain their original potency, a small study suggests. Expiration dates and stability data would be useful to discuss in terms of national stockpiles of antidotes for bioterrorism and chemical warfare.

This resource provides links to legislation and regulations related to medical countermeasures.

This work is intended to serve as a resource of pharmaceutical options that may be available to communities when faced with a mass human exposure to a nerve agent and inadequate supplies of medical countermeasures.

The US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) announced a strategic partnership with Genentech. The company and ASPR’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) will focus first on developing a first-in-class therapeutic for hospitalized influenza patients and a treatment for lung injuries caused by inhaling sulfur mustard gas.

Ensuring appropriate distribution and dispensing of medical countermeasures can be logistically complex, but coordinated planning between local, state, and federal agencies facilitates an efficient public health response.