PIERCE COUNTY, Wash. — Pediatricians in Washington are urging parents to vaccinate their children against hepatitis B.
This comes even after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Panel voted to change its recommendation that all babies get the vaccine after they’re born.
In a vote that still needs to be confirmed by the acting CDC director, the advisory panel changed its recommendation.
The current recommendation is for every child to receive the vaccine, with parents advised to consult their pediatrician.
Executive Director for the Washington Chapter of the American Academy for Pediatrics Dr. Letach Rave says many families don’t have access to that kind of prenatal care.
“All of the children who are covered by Medicaid, their vaccines come through a program from the government called Vaccines for Children, VFC.” Rave said, “The route for all those children who depend on government vaccines from the VFC program to getting access to the vaccine is threatened.”
Hepatitis B is a disease that may not be noticeable when a person is first infected, but it eventually causes severe disease, like cirrhosis of the liver or liver cancer.
In response to the change, Congresswoman Kim Schrier, a democrat representing Washington’s 8th district, says 500,000 lives were saved during the 35 years of the universal recommendation.
Senator Bill Cassidy, a republican representing Louisiana in Washington, D.C., says that before the vaccine was universally recommended, 20,000 children would catch it each year.
In the past 35 years, fewer than 20 children have caught the disease. Both Rep. Schrier and Sen. Cassidy are medical doctors.
Schrier says kids who are infected have a 90% chance of it developing into a chronic disease.
“When we were only vaccinating high-risk people, we didn’t really make a dent in the number of people with hepatitis B in this country. It was not until we did childhood universal vaccination that we saw these drop by 99%,” Schrier said.
Schrier says as of now, insurers are still covering the vaccine.
Panelists who supported the change pointed to parents’ choice, even though the CDC’s vaccine advice was only a recommendation.
Catherine Stein said kids could be kept out of schools or doctors’ offices for not being vaccinated.
“They are removed from pediatricians’ offices if their parents have an informed choice to decline the vaccine,” Stein said, who is not a medical doctor but has a Ph.D in Epidemiology and is a professor at Case Western Reserve University.
Parents are able to file religious or philosophical objections to schools if their children do not get the vaccine.
“It’s a standard of care that’s been in place for a long time, and the track record is actually fabulous for the safety and the efficacy,” Rave said.