Are we forcing an STD vaccine on newborns?

While Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted, it isn’t only sexually transmitted. Doctors started recommending the Hepatitis B vaccine at birth because a lot of babies were being born to moms with Hep B who didn’t realize they had it. Scientists think 30-40% of those with chronic infections catch it when they are born or in early childhood. And only about half of the women with Hep B were identified before they had their babies.

Still today, about 25,000 newborns a year are born to a mother with a Hep B infection. 90% of newborns who contract the disease become chronic carriers, which puts them at higher risk for cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Several reasons led to many children being born to mothers with hepatitis B who didn’t know they had it. Testing for hep B is more complicated than other kinds of tests. Thus, some mothers caught hep B after they got tested during prenatal care and before they gave birth. Tests can sometimes give false negatives. Other mistakes in testing include ordering the wrong tests, misreading the results, or miscommunicating the results.

In addition to the possibility of a missed Hepatitis B infection in the mother, the Hepatitis B virus can live on surfaces for up to 7 days, including in dried blood. It can also be transmitted through bites like those in daycare or playgroup settings. Because it can live a week on surfaces, needles or bandaids discarded in public places can also be sources of infection. It’s not a common method of transmission, but the risk is not zero either.

By contrast, the Hepatitis B vaccine is one of the safest, with the fewest possible side effects. The most likely side effects are just pain and soreness at the injection site, without any documented serious side effects.

If the hep B vaccine causes any serious side effects, they are extremely rare—so rare that we haven’t found any in several millions of doses. Because the vaccine is safe and there’s a risk of getting infected at birth or during infancy, we give this vaccine right at birth.