(SRN NEWS/REUTERS) – An advisory panel voted Friday to scrap its long-standing recommendation that all infants receive a hepatitis B vaccine at birth, a shift that public health experts fear will undermine decades of public health advances.
Hepatitis B, which can spread from mother to child during birth, can cause severe liver disease and early death, and has no cure. According to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, the universal hepatitis B birth dose has prevented more than 500,000 childhood infections, cut infant cases by 95% and averted an estimated 90,100 deaths.
Many of the committee members, who were appointed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, criticized the vaccine safety data and said that the U.S. vaccine schedule was out of step with other countries, particularly Denmark, that have low hepatitis B rates.
The panel now recommends only infants born to mothers who test positive for hepatitis B should receive the birth dose. Parents of infants whose mothers test negative are advised to decide, in consultation with a healthcare provider, when or whether to begin the vaccine series.
Vaccine makers expressed concern about the decision, a shift that public health experts fear will undermine decades of public health advances.
Merck, whose Recombivax HB has been a staple of the U.S. childhood immunization program, said it was “deeply concerned” by the decision, warning it “puts infants at unnecessary risk of chronic infection, liver cancer and even death.”