A group of vaccine advisers on Friday scrapped a long-standing recommendation that all US children receive the hepatitis B shot at birth, a major policy win for health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jnr that disease experts say will reverse decades of public health gains.
The committee voted to keep the birth dose only for infants whose mothers test positive for the virus, replacing the 1991 universal recommendation that has protected all children from hepatitis B infections, which can lead to serious liver disease.
For infants of mothers who test negative, the panel recommended that parents, in consultation with a healthcare provider, should decide when or if their child will begin the vaccine series.
Under the scrapped recommendation, the birth dose is followed by two more vaccines, at one to two months and six to 18 months.
The committee recommended parents offer the first dose no sooner than two months of age and that parents test children for hepatitis B antibodies before deciding to give subsequent shots.
Public health experts decried the move, saying that a decision to shift to shared clinical decision-making would create obstacles to the use of vaccines, and that parents already have control over the care of their children.