EFFECTIVE: Taiwan’s relatively high vaccination coverage rates lowered the disease’s carrier rate among children to less than 0.8 percent, the CDC said
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By Lee I-chia / Staff reporter
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Taiwan’s universal hepatitis B vaccination for newborns would continue, as the disease’s prevalence differs among countries, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, in response to US vaccine advisers voting against universal hepatitis B shots for infants.
The US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to overturn a decades-long recommendation to start hepatitis B immunization at birth in the US.
The ACIP voted 8-3 to recommend the vaccine only to babies born to mothers who test positive for hepatitis B, or whose status is unknown.
A baby’s foot is pictured in an undated photograph.
Photo: CNA
It recommended “individual-based decisionmaking for parents deciding whether to give the hepatitis B vaccine, including the birth dose, to infants born to women who test negative for the virus,” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
“For those infants not receiving the birth dose, ACIP suggested in its recommendation that the initial dose be administered no earlier than two months of age,” it said.
The ACIP recommendation would become part of the centers’ immunization schedule once it is adopted by the agency’s director.
CDC spokesman Lin Min-cheng (林明誠) said Taiwan would not follow the US’ recommendation, adding that the decision was made after consulting with members of Taiwan’s ACIP.
Hepatitis B was relatively prevalent in Taiwan before, usually transmitted from mother to child, so a universal hepatitis B vaccination policy was launched in July 1986.
In November 1992, the recommended hepatitis B vaccination schedule for newborns were three doses, received at “zero, one and six months” after birth, he said, adding that since May 2011, the first dose was recommended within 24 hours after birth.
The first-dose hepatitis B vaccine coverage rate for infants born last year was 93.1 percent, while the second and third dose coverage rates were 98.9 percent and 97.7 percent respectively, Lin said.
The first-dose coverage is lower, because newborns sometimes need emergency treatment due to other conditions or because they were born with a low body weight (below 2kg), so they could not receive the first dose within 24 hours, he said, adding that the babies usually get the vaccine when their conditions are more stable.
Taiwan’s relatively high vaccine coverage rates lowered the hepatitis B carrier rate among children less than 0.8 percent, a significant decline from the 10.5 percent before policy implementation, Lin said.
Given the prevalence of hepatitis B among people who were born before the universal vaccination policy was implemented is still relatively high, and the heavy disease burden — including liver cirrhosis and liver cancer, which might differ from the US — the CDC would continue to implement the universal hepatitis B vaccination policy, he said.
