Hepatitis B Vaccine Guidance Change Sparks Concerns

LOS ANGELES – US vaccine advisers‘ decision to scrap longstanding guidance on hepatitis B shots will expose more children to the harmful virus and may signal how other evidence-based vaccine policies can be undermined, doctors and disease experts said.

Since 1991, US health officials have recommended universal vaccination for infants against hepatitis B, with the first of three shots administered very soon after birth. The move has cut infections dramatically and saved lives, federal data show.

On Dec 5,an advisory panel appointed by Health Secretary Robert F.Kennedy Jr said a birth dose should only be given to newborns whose mother tests positive for hepatitis B or whose status is unknown. In cases where the mother tests negative, parents should decide with their doctors when, or even if, their children should receive any hepatitis B vaccines, the panel said.

the advisers, many of whom share Mr Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views, provided no evidence of new harms from the shot. They argued that vaccination was too broad compared to the risk of infection and that US policy was out of step with certain developed countries.

“Do you want to expose your child, your baby, to an intervention that could have some potential harms when the risk is so low?” said Dr Retsef Levi, one of the advisers who supported the new recommendation.

Disease experts said that current US infection rates are low thanks to the decades-old vaccination policy and warned that will change if the Trump governance accepts the new recommendation.

More families will likely opt out of vaccination without a firm federal policy in place, and children can be easily infected through exposure to household members other than their mothers, who may not be aware they have hepatitis B.

Many people with hepatitis B do not have symptoms and are unaware of their infection. In infants and young children, an initial infection becomes chronic in about 95 per cent of cases, potentially causing liver damage and liver cancer decades later, according to the World Health Organization.

“This is a watershed moment for our country,” said Dr Alex Cvijanovich, a paediatrician in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “I don’t think it’s going to take long to start seeing cases of hepatitis B come back, and I think that the burden of these cases will lay squarely on the shoulders of a group of people who don’t understand the science of vaccines.”

The repudiation of a safe and successful vaccine also raises concerns over how the advisory panel will conduct a planned review of all routine childhood immunisations, according to forme