If you ever receive a letter with anthrax spores, the letter carriers may be there for you with a bag full of antibiotics. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials on Wednesday announced that letter carriers would deliver emergency supplies of antibiotics to protect people in case of an anthrax attack.

“These letter carriers are being asked to put their lives on the line to help their communities,” Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Wednesday. He added that letter carriers are the federal government’s “quickest and surest way of getting pills to whole communities.”

The Postal Service supports the proposal.

The government mail carriers would deliver thousands of doses of doxycycline. The antibiotic has been shown to be effective against anthrax infection, pneumonia and Lyme disease. Health officials said they would like to avoid Bayer AG’s Cipro, another antibiotic used to treat anthrax infection, to minimize development of resistant strains of germs.

Anthrax is an acute disease in humans and animals caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis which is highly lethal in some forms. Its spores can be grown in vitro and be used as a biological weapon. When spores are inhaled, or come into contact with a skin lesion on a host they reactivate and multiply rapidly. The infections are easily treated if they are caught early. Leavitt noted that if someone possibly has inhaled anthrax, the chances of survival are best if antibiotic treatment begins within 48 hours.

In the anthrax attacks that occurred less than a month after the September 11, 2001, suicide attacks, five people died; two of them were postal workers. The anthrax mailings contaminated with anthrax spores were sent to media organizations and politicians. After the 2001 attacks, thousands of people took antibiotics including Bayer AG's ciprofloxacin, doxycycline, to prevent infection in case they were exposed to the deadly spores.

“The intentional release of anthrax spores is one of the most significant biological threats we face,” Leavitt said.

The next step would be receiving the Food and Drug Administration approval to distribute the drugs for this purpose. The federal government has enough anthrax antibiotics in the Strategic National Stockpile to treat 40 million people for 60 days.

In Philadelphia, experimental runs of the distribution strategy were held last year. 50 letter carriers accompanied by a city police officer reached 55,000 households in a mission which took less than eight hours. Test projects were also held in Seattle and Boston. Officials said more cities could be added next year.

For this year’s project, Minneapolis-St. Paul was chosen because of its extensive bioterrorism preparation, said William Raub, senior service counsellor to Michael O. Leavitt. The Postal Service there will solicit about 700 letter carriers, enough to cover 20 Zip codes or about one-quarter of all households. All workers will be medically screened and will wear a special anthrax-protective mask while delivering the letters.