Thank you for the information. I learned something today. =)
You should see all the information that I read as I look this stuff up, it goes much deeper than what I posted, I just haven’t been able to get it together in a way to present a good overview.
I am glad that these cut and pastes help to give an impression of how deep the Army is involved in this stuff (and it is primarily the Army, although DOD is mentioned a lot).
I think for a lot of us that read military history, we already had a sense that the Army has been at this for centuries (Cholera, Malaria, etc, research, prevention cures), and that many people go “oh yeah” when they are reminded that the Army is the go to guys on bio agents in all areas, from creating or locating them, to finding cures, to delivering them and defending from them and so on, it is an area that they are knee deep in, and have been for generations.
“We had a large footprint in Africa, Cummings said of the Defense Departments response to the first Ebola cases reported in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire. Since that time, the Defense Department has answered numerous calls for assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO), nongovernmental organizations and ministries of heath and defense, he said.”