It's the best prevention you can give. Hepatitis B Vaccine Hepatitis B is a virus that causes infection in the liver. It is a disease that can be caught at any time of life from someone with the infection. An infected mother, for example, can pass the infection to her newborn infant. The first infection often does not seem serious, but hepatitis B can have long-term effects, such as liver failure and cancer later in life.
Prevention is very important.
Recently concerns have come up about how much mercury young infants might be receiving, from food as well as from shots. The age at which a baby should get the shots depends on which vaccine is being used. If the new vaccine is not available, give the first shot at 6 months and complete the series of three shots by 18 months. This shot was intended to prevent an infection called rotavirus, a disease causing severe diarrhea, which can lead to dangerous dehydration in small children. Some children had a bad reaction to this shot, however.