Immunization of Children Urged to Battle Hepatitis B

As the number of hepatitis B cases continues to rise in California, parents should be urged have their children immunized against the viral disease, medical experts told a group of pediatricians at a meeting in Oxnard on Saturday.

However the new vaccine costs anywhere from $100 to $200 per child, said Marvin Ament, a professor of pediatrics at UCLA. Ament spoke to 55 doctors and health-care workers gathered at the Mandalay Beach Resort for a three-day conference on medical care for children.

“Cost is a big factor,” Ament said. “The public health department does not have the money for it.”

And since the price of the vaccine is so high, Ament said, the U. S. medical community has been slow to embrace it.

Members of the American Academy of Pediatrics will meet next month to discuss the issue, the doctors said.

Despite the cost, the vaccine is becoming increasingly necessary, said Melvin I. Marks, medical director of the Memorial Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach.

“The numbers (of hepatitis B cases) have increased, especially in California,” he said. “We’re turning our kids into pincushions, but it’s to their benefit.”

In California, Marks said, hepatitis B is most common among Asians, who are especially susceptible to the disease, which is spread through contact with contaminated blood or other bodily fluids. He said it is unknown why Asians are more susceptible to the disease than other populations.

The virus attacks and inflames the liver, causing jaundice and fever. In extreme cases, it can lead to liver cancer in adults.

“Normally we vaccinate to prevent childhood diseases,” Marks said. But in this case, “we vaccinate to prevent a disease later in life.”

Marks estimated that 15 out of every 10,000 people in the United States have hepatitis B, a number he said has increased tenfold in the last decade.

So far, public health officials are administering the vaccine to youngsters in Hawaii and Alaska, mostly because of the high incidence of the disease among the Asian and Eskimo populations, Marks said.

He said Taiwan also immunizes newborns against hepatitis B.

“Since we have the vaccine,” Ament said, “why not use it?”

About half a dozen other speakers also addressed the members of the medical convention, which was organized by the Pediatric Diagnostic Center at the Ventura County Medical Center. The group included doctors from throughout the Southland.

Other topics discussed ranged from epileptic seizures and cancer to acne and scabies.

O. Carter Snead III, vice-chairman of the neurology department at USC, told the group that research is under way on a breakthrough drug for treating epilepsy. He said the drug would react with the “excitatory amino acid system” in the brain, stopping the seizures. The drug is expected to be on the market within the next decade.