SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay naval base will soon get swine- flu vaccines, despite complaints that American civilians should have priority, a military spokesman said Sunday.
Army Maj. James Crabtree, a spokesman for the U.S. jail facility in southeast Cuba, said the doses should start arriving this month, with guards and then inmates scheduled for inoculations. He said U.S. military officials are “responsible for the health and care of the detainee population.”
There has been heated debate in several U.S. states about where prisoners should fall in the pecking order of vaccine recipients.
A spokesman for Physicians for Human Rights, an international medical group, said there are “certain basic obligations the U.S. has to its prisoners” and that vaccinations for influenza fall into that category.
Roughly 215 detainees remain at the detention center.
The Associated Press
