DOCS WARNED ABOUT POX.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Los Angeles County health officials announced Thursday they are ordering doctors and nurses to report any suspected cases of smallpox as part of efforts to identify possible bioterrorism threats.

Though the World Health Organization declared the illness eradicated worldwide in 1977, the county is part of early warning preparedness in the event the lesion-producing virus is unleashed on the population.

``If physicians suspect this disease, immediate notification to the health department would help minimize its spread, and lives would be saved,'' said county Health Officer Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding.

The county Department of Health Services is one of three metropolitan health departments in the United States to receive a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for bioterrorism preparation. The three-year grant provides $800,000 a year to the county.

The CDC has determined that smallpox, anthrax and the plague are the most likely microorganisms to be used in a terrorist attack.

Remnants of the smallpox virus are kept in high security sites in the United States and the former Soviet Union, but federal officials are concerned that terrorists could obtain the virus, Fielding said.

The county has been the target of more than four dozen threats of the release of anthrax since December 1998, according to a recent federal Gilmore Commission report.

One of the hoaxes occurred Dec. 21, 1998, at the Van Nuys Courthouse when an anonymous caller to 911 claimed anthrax had been released at the courthouse, necessitating the evacuation of 1,200 people.

``As such, Los Angeles has the dubious distinction of being the nation's anthrax-hoax capital,'' the report noted.