CDC ends recommendation for all US newborns to receive hepatitis B vaccine | US healthcare
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday ended a longstanding recommendation that all U.S. newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine.
The agency’s move comes after health minister Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine advisory panel voted that the birth dose should only be given to newborns whose mothers test positive for hepatitis B or whose condition is unknown.
The CDC will now recommend that parents consult a healthcare professional to decide whether babies born to hepatitis B-negative mothers should receive vaccinations, including the birth dose.
“We are restoring the balance of informed consent to parents whose newborns are at very low risk of contracting hepatitis B,” said Jim O’Neill, acting director of the CDC and assistant secretary of health. expression.
If parents choose not to vaccinate their newborn at birth but feel vaccination is necessary, the agency now recommends waiting at least two months to give the child the first dose of vaccine.
The policy change marks an abrupt end to 30 years of established medical guidance. Since 1991, U.S. health officials have recommended universal vaccination against hepatitis B for infants, with the first of three vaccinations given soon after birth.
Experts have expressed concern about the policy change, which the CDC describes as “individual-based decision making.”
“This will lead to an increase in preventable infections among children,” Michaela Jackson, program director of prevention policy at the Hepatitis B Foundation, told the Guardian after vaccine advisers voted earlier this month. He predicts that “parents will no longer know who to trust.”
Jackson also said the policy change “removes the option by creating access barriers.” The agency’s recommendations affect U.S. health insurance coverage and play an important role in helping doctors choose appropriate vaccines for patients.
Hepatitis B can cause serious liver disease and is spread primarily through blood, semen, or some other body fluids, and can also spread through close contact with people who do not know they are infected.
Hepatitis B infections down almost 90% It rose from 9.6 per 100,000 people in 1982, before widespread vaccination in the U.S., to about one per 100,000 people in 2018.
experts to warn The new recommendation, which the CDC describes as individual-based decision-making, could expose more children to the harmful virus and lead to more families opting out of vaccinations in the absence of sound federal policy. Kennedy is a long-time anti-vaccine activist who has made sweeping changes to U.S. vaccination policy.
Infectious diseases specialist from the University of Chicago Medicine, Dr. The mission of the CDC’s advisory panel is to help clinicians interpret the body of science and make good decisions about how to care for their patients, Emily Landon said.
“This recommendation ignores science. The fact that the acting director of the CDC signed on to this continues to reinforce that they are no longer committed to science-based recommendations to improve health,” Landon said.
