trump Advises Parents Against Hepatitis B Vaccine for Babies,Contradicting Medical Consensus
WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump recently suggested the hepatitis B vaccine is unnecessary for newborns,stating it is primarily a sexually transmitted disease. Medical experts strongly disagree,citing widespread risks of infection for infants and the vaccine’s proven effectiveness in preventing a perhaps life-threatening illness.
Hepatitis B is a viral infection that attacks the liver and can cause both acute and chronic disease. Before universal vaccination began in the U.S.in 1991, approximately 18,000 children a year were infected with the virus before age 10, with roughly half contracting it thru mother-to-child transmission, according to Dr.Paul Pavia.
While hepatitis B can be sexually transmitted, experts emphasize that infants face numerous other routes of exposure. “There have been cases of infections in daycare. There have been cases of infection on sports teams. There have been documented infections from shared toothbrushes and from shared razors,” Pavia stated. The virus can survive on surfaces for up to seven days and is present in blood, saliva, semen, and even tears. A child with a wound could become infected through contact with contaminated surfaces, explains Dr. Anita Patel, a pediatrician and pediatric critical care physician in Washington, D.C.
Approximately half of those infected with hepatitis B are unaware they carry the virus, yet remain capable of transmitting it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”if you have a cut,that blood could potentially get on the infant,” Patel says. “And if that infant has any sort of break in their skin – as infants, frankly, frequently do – they can than get hepatitis B.”
Dr. Su Wang, an internist and researcher specializing in hepatitis at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey, believes she contracted the virus as an infant through her grandparents, who worked as medical professionals in Taiwan-a country that previously had high rates of hepatitis B infection before implementing a successful national vaccination program in the 1980s. ”When I was born,they came over to help…and they lived with us,” Wang recounts. “They became primary caregivers for the first month of life. And so very likely that’s how I got hep B.”
Since the introduction of routine newborn hepatitis B vaccination in the U.S., cases among individuals age 19 and younger have decreased by 99 percent. “When we started doing this as universal for all kids, you saw this blanket protection that protected an entire generation of kids,” Wang says. the vaccine is administered shortly after birth to prevent the virus from establishing an infection.
