Doctors call the hepatitis B vaccine ‘one of the cornerstones’ of preventionIn a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy praised the success of the recommendation to give babies a hepatitis B vaccine at birth. “Before 1991, as many as 20,000 babies, babies, were infected with hepatitis B in the United States of America, and that changed when the hepatitis B vaccine was approved for newborns,” Cassidy said. The first hepatitis B vaccine was licensed in 1981, and the ACIP recommended a vaccine dose universally for all babies in 1991. The hepatitis B birth dose “acts as a safety net, reducing the risk for perinatal transmission when the [hepatitis B] status of the parent is either unknown or incorrectly documented at delivery,” the CDC said. Dr. Su Wang, a primary care doctor and person living with chronic hepatitis B who is a spokesperson for the Hepatitis B Foundation, knows how easily people can get missed from both sides of the healthcare system.