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State health officials in Michigan continue to urge families to vaccinate their newborn babies against hepatitis B, after a federal vaccine advisory ended a longstanding recommendation that all babies get the vaccine the day they’re born.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) issued a statement Friday, Dec. 5, opposing the new recommendations to delay hepatitis B vaccines by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a panel whose current members were all appointed by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine critic.
Since 1991, the government has advised that all babies get the hepatitis B vaccine right after birth. However, the ACIP’s new guidelines recommend the birth dose only for babies whose mothers test positive, and in cases where the mom wasn’t tested, according to the Associated Press.
For other babies, the committee chose to recommend that the vaccination series begin when the child is 2 months old.
MDHHS said it “strongly disagrees” with the ACIP’s new recommendations and urged families and providers to follow the immunization schedules from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians, which both recommend hepatitis B vaccinations at birth.
“Vaccines play a critical role in the prevention and control of infectious diseases and have led to the eradication of several diseases and significant reductions in illnesses and fatalities,” the MDHHS said Friday.
“Proven to be safe and effective in its use over the past 20 years, since the universal hepatitis B vaccination at birth was adopted in 2002, hepatitis B disease among children and adolescents has virtually been eliminated.”
Hepatitis B attacks the liver, and about 90% of infants infected at birth develop chronic hepatitis B infection, according to MDHHS. One in four of these children die prematurely from liver disease.
Studies have shown that delaying the vaccine can lead to new infections and lifelong disease for tens of thousands of children, the state said.
An estimated 1.6 million people are chronically infected with hepatitis B in the U.S., but only half realize they have the virus, MDHHS said. In the U.S., the virus causes 22,000 infections and 2,000 deaths a year.
The virus is spread through contact with blood or certain body fluids, including through contact sports, sharing of towels, toothbrushes or razors, according to the state health department.