🚼 US Vaccine Advisers Change Hepatitis B Shot Policy 📉

A federal vaccine advisory committee voted to end the longstanding recommendation that all U.S. babies get the hepatitis B vaccine on the day they’re born.

A loud chorus of medical and public health leaders decried the actions of the panel, whose current members were all appointed by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading anti-vaccine activist before this year becoming the nation’s top health official.

“This is the group that can’t shoot straight,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert who for decades has been involved with ACIP and its workgroups.

For decades, the government has advised that all babies be vaccinated against the liver infection right after birth. The shots are widely considered to be a public health success for preventing thousands of illnesses.

But Kennedy’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided to recommend the birth dose only for babies whose mothers test positive, and in cases where the mom wasn’t tested. For other babies, it will be up to the parents and their doctors to decide if a birth dose is appropriate. The committee voted 8-3 to suggest that when a family decides not to get a birth dose, then the vaccination series should begin when the child is two months old.

The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Jim O’Neill, is expected to decide later whether to accept the committee’s recommendation.

The decision marks a return to a public health strategy that was abandoned more than three decades ago. Committee members said the risk of infection for most babies is very low and earlier research that found the shots were safe for infants was inadequate.

They also worried that in many cases, doctors and nurses don’t have full conversations with parents about the pros and cons of the birth-dose vaccination.

Hepatitis B is a serious liver infection that, for most people, lasts less than six months. But for some, especially infants and children, it can become a long-lasting problem that can lead to liver failure, liver cancer and scarring called cirrhosis.

In adults, the virus is spread through sex or through sharing needles during injection drug use. But it can also be passed from an infected mother to a baby.

Such testing is not standard pediatric practice after vaccination.