Initial symptoms include fever, cough, and weakness. These ultimately progress to breathing problems, shock, and death. Vaccines prevent illness by stimulating the body s natural disease-fighting abilities. They are among the most powerful tools developed by modern medicine to keep people healthy. Vaccines are used routinely in the U.S. to protect against such diseases likeas tetanus, mumps, measles, whooping cough, and polio.
Vaccines also help protect against such biological weapons likeas anthrax.
As part of Force Health Protection, personnel are given additional vaccines to provide maximum protection against naturally occurring diseases encountered when deploying overseas, such as typhoid, hepatitis A, and yellow fever. The vaccine contains no living or dead anthrax organisms. Vaccination produces antibodies that neutralize the disease-causing protein common to every strain of anthrax. Human anthrax vaccines were developed in England and the U.S. in the 1950s and early 1960s. The next three doses are given at intervals of five months, six months, and six months after the date of the previous dose.