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 |  | Hepatitis B in Georgia | | | Program highlights: | | • | Goal is to protect newborns from acquiring Chronic hepatitis B infection from their mothers through timely, aggressive medical intervention | | • | The entire cohort of pregnant women – approximately 50,000 women annually - screened for hepatitis B carriage | | • | Infants born to hepatitis B carriers receive both HBIG (antiglobulin against hepatitis B) and the hepatitis B vaccine within 12 hours of birth | | • | RVF trains health care workers and provides screening kits, definitive testing materials, and HBIG for at-risk infants to health facilities throughout the country |
| The hepatitis B virus can be passed from infected mothers to their newborns during the process of labor and delivery. Indeed, approximately 90% of chronic carriers of hepatitis B infection will transmit their infection if no preventative therapy is given laboring mothers and/or their babies. This perinatal transmission can be successfully
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|  | | Child at an orphanage in Batumi, Georgia. All children in Georgia are included in the RVF vaccination program against measles, mumps & rubella (MMR). |
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| prevented if two conditions are met: 1) Pregnant women are identified as carriers before labor has begun; 2) Appropriate therapy is begun for carrier mothers and /or their offspring.The RVF has an ambitious program in Georgia to meet these two rigorous conditions in an effort to protect the vulnerable population of neonates from the ravages of chronic hepatitis B infection. Working collaboratively with the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Social of the Republic of Georgian, the RVF is providing the training and materials which will enable the country’s health care workers to perform rapid diagnostic screening for hepatitis B on the entire cohort of pregnant women, approximately 50,000 individuals annually. Women will be tested at their first prenatal check-up. If rapid screening is positive, more extensive and definitive testing will be performed in Georgian Reference Laboratories. This definitive testing, also funded by the RVF, will allow identification of neonates exposed to hepatitis B who will be treated with the combined preventative therapy of vaccine and specific antibody –HBIG. Transmission rates are known to fall from 90% to less than 1% for hepatitis B when the program is successfully implemented.
An undertaking of such complexity and national scope – the screening of the entire cohort of pregnant women each year and the need to begin potentially life-saving therapy to mother and/or neonate within demanding time limits – requires for its successful implementation a high level of proficiency on the part of the nation’s health care workers in maternity homes and on the part of the laboratory staff locally and centrally. To these ends, the RVF has committed resources to insure the successful organizational structure of the program and to develop training seminars for the various stake-holders. Working collaboratively with the Ministry of Health and the Georgian National CDC, these training sessions will insure that the goals of the program – the prevention of severe, even fatal viral infection in the newborn – are achieved. | | |
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The Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Foundation (RVF) is a non-political, non-partisan organization whose mission is to make a difference in the health and wellbeing of vulnerable children...
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