As the video points out: USPS and the Department of Health and Human Services has asked Congress for $5 million to fund the bio-terror program an additional 3 years. Without it they cannot expand to other cities or maintain personnel already trained to respond in the event of a bio terror attack. A Government shutdown could mean an end to this particular program.
If there was a bio-terrorism attack in a major city and you needed to deliver antibiotics to every resident fast, who better than the U.S. Postal Service, with the equipment, the knowledge and the volunteers. Fifteen-hundred letter carriers trained and fitted with protective gear, part of the postal plan initiative; ready to distribute medicine to every resident of Philadelphia and four other cities within 48 hours of an attack. But the program is almost out of money.
Video: The postal service’s unique role in fight against terror – Fox News
From the Department of Health and Human Services
NATIONAL POSTAL MODEL FOR THE DELIVERY OF MEDICAL COUNTERMEASURES
…known as Operation Medicine Delivery, was the culmination of planning efforts that began in February 2004, with a memorandum of agreement signed by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and the Postmaster General. Parties to the 2004 MOA agreed to make USPS resources available for distributing emergency medicine in response to a bioterrorist attack. A subsequent presidential executive order (December 2009) called for the development of a federal capability to distribute medical countermeasures (MCM) in response to a bioterrorist attack.
(a) The U.S. Postal Service has the capacity for rapid residential delivery of medical countermeasures for self administration across all communities in the United States. The Federal Government shall pursue a national U.S. Postal Service medical countermeasures dispensing model to respond to a large-scale biological attack.
(b) The Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security, in coordination with the U.S. Postal Service, within 180 days of the date of this order, shall establish a national U.S. Postal Service medical countermeasures dispensing model for U.S. cities to respond to a large-scale biological attack, with anthrax as the primary threat consideration.
(c) In support of the national U.S. Postal Service model, the Secretaries of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Defense, and the Attorney General, in coordination with the U.S. Postal Service, and in consultation with State and local public health, emergency management, and law enforcement officials, within 180 days of the date of this order, shall develop an accompanying plan for supplementing local law enforcement personnel, as necessary and appropriate, with local Federal sworn law enforcement, as well as other appropriate personnel, to escort U.S. Postal workers delivering medical countermeasures.”