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Prevention of Perinatal Hepatitis B
In 1990, Washington State established
a program to prevent perinatal HBV infections. Department of Health staff
collaborate with Perinatal Hepatitis B Coordinators designed in each local
health jurisdiction to assure case management services are provided. The key
elements of perinatal HBV prevention include:
- HBsAg screening of all
pregnant women,
- Identification and reporting
of HBsAg-positive pregnant women and assurance that infants receive
HBIG and hepatitis B vaccine dose 1 at birth, and the three dose series
by 6-8 months, Postvaccination testing of infants to assess infectivity
and immune status, and and identification, screening, and vaccination
of household/sexual contacts is also done. Annual assessments are
competed to assure that program objectives are reached. Approximately
60% of the expected births to HBsAg-positive women are identified per
year. Additional efforts can be done to identify more women in order to
assure follow-up services are provided to infants and household
contacts.
To make certain that infants born to
HBsAg-positive mothers receive prompt and appropriate preventive treatment, each
pregnancy for an HBsAg-positive woman is a notifiable condition (Reporting
requirement: Washington Administrative Code (WAC) 246-101-101) The coordinator
of the Perinatal Hepatitis B Prevention Program (PHBPP) for each local health
jurisdiction handles the reports and the reports are then sent to the state
perinatal hepatitis B surveillance system .
Additionally, The Perinatal Hepatitis B Program and Communicable Disease
Epidemiology Section collaborate to assure that information about each perinatal
hepatitis B case is received by CDC’s Perinatal Program as well as by the
surveillance epidemiologists in CDC’s Division of Viral Hepatitis.
DOH Communicable Disease Epidemiology-877-539-4344 or 206-418-5500 DOH
Immunization Program CHILD Profile-360-236-3595.
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