Vaccinate Against A Killer Virus
Get Hep, Montana
Montanans need to arm themselves against hepatitis B, study says.By Amy Linn, 1-11-10
Hepatitis B virus. Image courtesy of National Institutes of Health.
Three states in the nation don’t require children to get hepatitis B vaccinations before entering day care or school—and Montana is one of them, according to the Associated Press. The oversight puts children at risk, a new study concludes.
Why are hepatitis B vaccinations—typically requiring three shots—so important? Hep B is a silent killer, a liver infection that, if chronic, can lead to liver failure, cancer or permanent scarring. According to the Centers for Disease Control, an estimated 1.2 million people in the U.S. have chronic Hepatitis B and an additional 43,000 people become infected each year. Many people are unwitting carriers, since they often don’t discover they have the disease until symptoms of liver damage appear, sometimes a decade or more after infection.
The good news is that hepatitis B vaccination makes the disease entirely preventable.
That’s why the Institute of Medicine today called for a “major public health push” to combat hep B and raise awareness about a similarly virulent disease, hepatitis C, the AP said. (There is no vaccine for hepatitis C, and the Institute called for more research to find one.)
The hepatitis B virus is typically transmitted through needles or syringes; via sexual conduct, through exchanges of blood, semen or other bodily fluids; or during childbirth, when women can pass the virus to their infants.
Aside from Montana, the other two states that don’t require hep B vaccinations for young children are Alabama and South Dakota.
As the Institute of Medicine report sees it, this is part of a major problem across the country. “Up to 5.3 million people—2 percent of the U.S. population—are living with chronic hepatitis B or hepatitis C,” the report says. “These diseases are more common than HIV/AIDS in the U.S. Yet, because hepatitis B and hepatitis C often present no symptoms, most people who have them are unaware until they develop liver cancer or liver disease many years later.”
For more information about hepatitis B, check out the CDC website.
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It won't be long before people will be confusing the swampy south with those high, dry northern tier states...
I have a four month old, and it's scary the amount of vaccines and live viruses we allow the nurses to shoot into his leg every two months. We opted out of the Hep B shot. My wife and I stopped hanging out at the meth lab long ago.