BOSTON – Governor Maura Healey and Massachusetts Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Robbie Goldstein are denouncing a vote by the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to abandon the longstanding recommendation that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth.
Healey said the hepatitis B vaccine is safe, effective and lifesaving and has been recommended for newborns since 1991, resulting in a 99 percent decrease in pediatric infection rates.
The governor said the Mass health department continues to recommend that newborns receive the vaccine.
“This is about the health and safety of our children. This vote by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handpicked advisers is dangerous and wrong. I want the people of Massachusetts to know that your state Department of Public Health, led by an actual doctor and guided by science and data, continues to recommend that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine. We are going to continue to work with other states to ensure that all of our residents can receive the vaccines they need and want to keep them and their children healthy,” said Healey.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic, has made several other decisions impacting vaccine programs since being appointed to the position by President Trump earlier this year. Click here for related stories.
Commissioner Goldstein said, “As an infectious disease physician, I cannot overstate how reckless this move is. Removing the newborn hepatitis B vaccine from the routine schedule is a decision driven by ideology, not science, and it ignores decades of irrefutable evidence that this dose saves lives. For more than three decades, the birth dose has been one of the safest, most effective, and most powerful tools we have to prevent lifelong infection, liver failure, and liver cancer.”
By Jim McCabe, CapeCod.com NewsCenter
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