Residents in some cities could be getting a very special delivery from their letter carrier in the event of a bioterrorist attack. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt this month put in motion a plan that would allow U.S. Postal Service workers to deliver anthrax antibiotics to homes on their routes, according to an October 2 article in the Washington Post.

"We have found letter carriers to be the federal government's quickest and surest way of getting pills to whole communities," Leavitt told the Post.

In a Philadelphia test run of the plan, 50 postal workers and accompanying police officers were able to reach 55,000 households in under eight hours, according to the article.

The plan received a thumbs up from Stanford management science professor Lawrence M. Wein in an October 13 New York Times op-ed. Wein said postal delivery would be faster than alternative “point of distribution” pick up and would reach people who wouldn’t or couldn’t make it to distribution points. He warned, however, that while the mail carrier approach is a good start, bulking up the Strategic National Strategic Stockpile of antibiotics is necessary to make it to the finish line.

The postal delivery plan—available to any of the 72 Cities Readiness Initiative cities that choose to participate—can’t be put into place until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the distribution, according to the Post article.

For more about the Cities Readiness Initiative, including other proposed plans for dispensing antibiotics in a public health emergency, visit the website.