Last week, a CDC advisory panel voted to stop recommending the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns.

As the director of the CDC decides whether to approve such a change, a state agency and many local pediatricians will continue recommending the three dose vaccine starting at birth.

So hepatitis B is a virus that can infect the liver.

Some people get sick and they get over it.

Other people develop a chronic infection.

And with chronic infection we see inflammation of the liver, scarring, cirrhosis.

There can be cancer of the liver and even death.

Getting infected as a baby is particularly dangerous because 90% of babies who are infected go on to, carry the virus long term.

They have chronic infection, and 1 in 4 will develop serious health complications over their lifetime.

So the good news is, hepatitis B is a vaccine preventable illness.

We have vaccines that have been extensively studied, hundreds of studies, and they are safe and they work really well to protect babies against this viral infection.

I will say that many, but not all pregnant women are tested, for hepatitis B virus.

And the test is excellent when it happens.

But no test is 100%.

So even testing doesn't identify 100% of people who are infected.

The virus can live for seven days on a surface.

And so, you know, even if we're testing pregnant people, we're not testing everybody in the house, right?

So if a baby is born into a family where there's somebody who's infected with hepatitis B, maybe they don't even know it.

Vaccine at birth protects them to the universal, birth dose for hepatitis B has been recommended since 1991.

It is very safe.

Safety has been extensively studied.

And it's been very effective.

And 99% decrease in infections in young children.

And there are no new data to suggest otherwise.

And so that's why the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Kentucky Department for Public Health continue to recommend, a dose at birth and then a three dose series.

Most recent data from the CDC says Kentucky has the third highest rate of acute hepatitis B infections, after West Virginia and Florida.

However, West Virginia's rate decreased in 2023, while Kentucky's increased.