Why do newborns need the hepatitis virus vaccine?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The hepatitis-B vaccine is given to the newborn on a calendar day on the first day of life. Parents rightly doubt the advisability of vaccinating a child so early against an infection, the risk of contracting it in a healthy family is negligible.

Today I will tell you why this vaccine is not only impractical, but also ineffective in the first months of life.

Russia belongs to the average endemic country in terms of the number of people infected with the hepatitis B virus (2-4% of the population).

With this endemicity, transmission of the virus occurs most often through unprotected intercourse or through injecting drug use. Obviously, small children are not threatened with such a fate?

However, WHO insists on universal vaccination of newborns, since a third of all transmission of viruses occurs at the time of birth from infected mothers.

Ok, vaccination of newborns in infected mothers seems logical (albeit very controversial). However, 98% of women of childbearing age in Russia are not carriers of the virus. What is the expediency of universal vaccination of newborns? Are they better at developing a long-term immune response to the vaccine? But I also know from textbooks that the immunity of a newborn is not capable of forming an immunological memory. As for the hepatitis B vaccine specifically, the immune response develops better with vaccination from 2 to 19 years, and the duration of the immunological memory for this vaccine does not exceed 5-7 years.

Thus, not all newborns will develop long-term immunity to the vaccine. And if immunity does arise, then protection will not persist until puberty, when the risk of infection increases…if the vaccine is capable of protecting against infection at all. These theses are confirmed in a recent multicenter study in India on 5,024 children, half of whom were vaccinated at birth and half were unvaccinated. The results showed that after 5-7 years of life, only 35% of vaccinated children retained their immunity, while the number of carriers of the infection was equal in both groups. The authors of the article question the need for this vaccine in the national immunization program.

In most European countries, newborn babies are not vaccinated against the hepatitis virus, and in countries such as Great Britain, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands there is no mass vaccination against hepatitis B at all. In most countries of the world, newborns are vaccinated only in infected mothers and other risk groups …

But why is the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation so obediently following the recommendations of WHO experts, who have no objective arguments in favor of mass vaccination of newborns? Not a single immunologist answered this question, from whom I repeatedly studied on retraining and improvements. One professor only noted that "sanitary doctors and epidemiologists approve vaccination calendars with good intentions, based on the opinions of WHO experts."

In turn, these experts in the WHO Official Position were able to give only one logical statement in favor of universal vaccination of newborns: vaccination against hepatitis B in the maternity hospital guarantees the greatest coverage. That is, while a woman is in an altered state of consciousness after childbirth, is this the best moment to make a decision on vaccination? At the same time, the right to make this decision is guaranteed by the legislation of the Russian Federation. And such an important decision, of course, must be made consciously.

Conclusions:

1. Mass vaccination of newborns is not justified.

2. Vaccination of children in healthy parents is advisable after 2 years, when a long-term immune response is formed.

3. WHO recommends universal vaccination of newborns in maternity hospitals, as this provides the greatest coverage of vaccine prevention.

I hope this information will help parents make an informed decision about vaccinating their children.

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