Dr Kerryn Phelps, Health Editor, with Richard Wilkins, Channel Nine 'Today'

PHELPS: Thank you, Richard.

WILKINS: Tell us about this conference. Was there a consensus that there is a very real threat of bioterrorism?

PHELPS: There's no question that there is a very real threat, and that no country can afford to be complacent and Australia is no exception. And I think that if we look at the events of September 11 last year with the United States, the biological attack with anthrax that soon followed after that and now, very close to home, the attack in Bali, I think it really has driven home to us that we have to be prepared for the unthinkable.

WILKINS: Yes, we are living in an environment where anything is obviously possible. I mean, what is the best guess about what a biological attack could look like?

PHELPS: Well, the CDC, which is responsible for monitoring infectious diseases in the United States, have identified at least 50 potential biological weapons. Now, this is frightening in itself and we have treatment for only 13 of those. But they've listed a number of Category A risks and those Category A risks include smallpox, anthrax, a bug called Tularaemia, Botulism, and Marburg and Ebola viruses. Now, the reason that they've listed these as Category A is that they are relatively easy to acquire, that they are easy to spread.

WILKINS: How would they spread them?

PHELPS: They can be spread in a number of ways: by aerosol, by person-to-person transmission, in the case of plague by infected rodents or fleas. Also, there are a number of different ways it can be spread with botulism through food. And if you have a look at smallpox - now, these are pictures that we haven't seen since the 1970s when, thank God, we were able to eradicate this infection. However, there was still some of the smallpox virus still maintained in some laboratories for research purposes, and not all of that is accounted for. Plague is another bug that has been used in biological warfare over the years and can cause massive death and destruction. And the Ebola virus - it's a haemorrhagic fever, which is being also looked at as a potential biological weapon. Tularaemia is an infection from cattle, which can also be transmitted to humans. And so there is a list of those Category A biological weapons but that's by no means limited and the potential for these infections is almost unlimited by even our imagination.

WILKINS: It's unthinkable that we're even talking about this. What are we doing about it? The Government is stockpiling some smallpox vaccine?

PHELPS: Yes. I had a meeting with the U.S. Surgeon-General when I was in Washington and there's no question that the U.S. is gearing up, very solidly, for a response to biological terrorism and that's happening at local, state and federal level. And part of that is going to be building the public health infrastructure, strengthening their public hospitals, putting money and finances, resources into developing research, vaccinations, treatments and, of course, other defences and making sure that people, even the medical profession, are aware. And part of this is going to be a change of culture where the medical profession will have to be involved in discussions with the military, with intelligence, with government, so that we have awareness by the medical professionals, the ability of the system to cope and also international links between countries because, if something like this is unleashed, we are going to need to have international cooperation. And I do think an important thing to do is to support our own government in its efforts to protect the population with preparedness in whatever way we can.

WILKINS: Thanks for coming in this morning.

PHELPS: Thanks, Richard.

Ends