All newborns to be given hepatitis B jab
After watchdog says 96 per cent of cases are among immigrants...
ALL babies are to be vaccinated against a deadly cancer-causing virus which experts fear is becoming increasingly common because of immigration.
They will be inoculated against hepatitis B, which can trigger liver cancer, in a new jab that protects against six diseases at once.
The Scottish Government confirmed the ‘Hexa’ jab – which is given at four, eight and 16 weeks – will soon be offered to all infants in an effort to eradicate hepatitis B from the UK.
It follows moves by Public Health England (PHE), which will offer the Hexa vaccine to all babies born from next month.
The vaccination comes 13 years after the World Health Organisation said ‘routine vaccination of all infants… should become an integral part of national immunisation schedules worldwide’.
Historically, infection rates of the blood-borne virus have been so low in Britain it has not been a major concern. But there are fears numbers are rising, largely because of immigration from developing countries. In some sub-Saharan African countries, one in seven is a carrier. East Asia and parts of Eastern Europe are also hotspots.
The Hep B vaccine is currently offered north of the Border only to specific ‘at risk’ children but it will be added to the routine immunisa- tion schedule for all babies later this year.
A slew of evidence suggests high rates of immigration are behind rising cases of ‘chronic’ infection.
In 2012 PHE reported that ‘19 out of every 20 antenatal women testing positive for hepatitis B’ in London ‘were born abroad’.
Of those, ‘nearly half were born in Africa and an increasing number of women from Eastern Europe have tested positive’. It concluded: ‘Long-term infections in migrants are estimated to account for 96 per cent of all new long-term hepatitis B infections in the UK’.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website states: ‘Data from the Health Protection Agency indicates the frequency of chronic infection is increasing in the UK because of migration from high prevalence areas of the world.’
Doctors are particularly worried about mothers passing the virus on to their babies during birth, after which the chance of developing chronic infection is 90 per cent.
Paul Desmond, chief executive of the Hep B Positive Trust, believes ‘political correctness’ has allowed an ‘unseen epidemic’ to develop.