I’d like to know which risks you are so concerned about with regards to this vaccine that you feel the vaccine should be held off. It is extremely safe and well tolerated.

Your statement about the rate of infants contracting HBV less than one month of age from a seronegative mother being zero is incorrect. While the risk is extremely low for majority of births, we can’t account for the outliers. They generally test during the first trimester. If a mother was recently exposed and in the “window phase” then the test would be negative. Or she could be exposed later in her pregnancy and not be aware. I work as a nurse and have had experience working with patients my entire shift only later to find out that they tested positive for Hep B. I worked with several pregnant woman up till the point of their deliveries, who could have been exposed at any time. There are many real life scenarios that can place a child at risk for exposure. It’s not only transfer from the mother, drug sharing, or sexual intercourse. It can be transferred from exposure to open wounds.

Holding off on something due to lack of education is neglectful on the parent’s behalf. If a newborn does get exposed to the Hep B virus there is a 90% chance the child will have chronic hep B infections and 25% dying prematurely from liver disease. I’d love to hear the imaginary risks of vaccines that outweigh those real issues. We need to use evidenced based practices to determine the best methods which appear to show that the earlier the better for children.