Vaccination coverage: Hepatitis B (1 year old) - WMCA

All children at age 12 months who have received the complete course (3 doses) of hepatitis B vaccine within each reporting area as a percentage of all the eligible population as defined in the hepatitis B chapter of the immunisation against infectious diseases "Green Book" (have maternal Hep B positive status). ## Rationale Infants born to hepatitis B virus (HBV) infected mothers are at high risk of acquiring HBV infection themselves. Babies born to infected mothers are given a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine after they are born. This is followed by another two doses (with a month in between each) and a booster dose 12 months later. Around 20% of people with chronic hepatitis B will go on to develop scarring of the liver (cirrhosis), which can take 20 years to develop, and around 1 in 10 people with cirrhosis will develop liver cancer. Vaccination coverage is the best indicator of the level of protection a population will have against vaccine preventable communicable diseases. Coverage is closely correlated with levels of disease. Monitoring coverage identifies possible drops in immunity before levels of disease rise. Since April 2000 it has been recommended that all pregnant women in England and Wales should be offered testing for hepatitis B through screening for HBsAg, and that all babies of HBsAg seropositive women should be immunised (HSC 1998 127). A dose of paediatric hepatitis B vaccine is recommended for all infants born to an HBV infected mother as soon as possible after birth, then at 1 and 2, and 12 months of age ( https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hepatitis-b-guidance-data-and-analysis ). Previous evidence shows that highlighting vaccination programmes encourages improvements in uptake levels may also have relevance for NICE guidance PH21: Reducing differences in the uptake of immunisations (The guidance aims to increase immunisation uptake among those aged under 19 years from groups where uptake is low). ## Definition of numerator Number of children at age 12 months who have received the complete course (3 doses) of hepatitis B vaccine. Numerator counts for local authorities include all people registered with practices in the local authority, and no data are available to provide resident based figures. ## Definition of denominator Eligible population as defined in the hepatitis B chapter of the immunisation against infectious diseases "Green Book" (have maternal Hep B positive status).Denominators for local authorities include all people registered with practices in the local authority, and no data are available to provide resident based figures. ## Caveats These statistics have been published as ‘experimental statistics’ in the NHS Digital “NHS Immunisation Statistics, England” report. There are a number of issues with the hepatitis B dataset which have either impacted on data quality or have raised potential concerns around the quality of the data. Selective neonatal hepatitis B coverage data are reported by local authority (LA) responsible population for the first time in the 2015 to 2016 publication. Many LAs could not supply complete data on infants born to hepatitis B positive mothers and for a number of other LAs there were data quality issues. It has therefore not been possible to estimate figures for those LAs or describe the quality/completeness of LA data with any accuracy. (see Quality Statement for 2015 to 2016 for more information). Office of Health Improvement and Disparities has also published data for LAs that are co terminus with former PCTs but provided data by PCT rather than LA. These data were not published or validated by NHS Digital.