immediate administration of Hepatitis B immune globulin to complement the existing neonatal vaccination program of the government. The combined approach will maximize available governmental resources and provide optimal protection to the emerging birth cohort. In the first year of the program it is anticipated that approximately 500 babies will be protected at birth from infection by their mothers. Hepatitis B is one of the major diseases of mankind and a serious global health problem. Every Western country has robust programs to prevent the hepatitis B virus from being transmitted from pregnant women to their newborn babies at the time of birth. Armenia lacks the ability to define the epidemiology of hepatitis B in pregnant women and thus is not capable of preventing the transmission of this terrible disease.

RVF will duplicate its ongoing project in neighboring Georgia, where the RVF identified an astounding rate of over 3% of hepatitis B carriage among pregnant women. Hepatitis B transmission has been successfully prevented in over 3,000 newborns of infected mothers. Armenian health experts anticipate a similar carrier rate in Yerevan, which equates to about 500 at-risk newborns a year.

Programs of prevention of vertical transmission (mother to baby) follow the guidelines established by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other internationally recognized health organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). To prevent the transmission of hepatitis B recommendations have been made to administer hepatitis B vaccine and hepatitis B immune globulin to the newborn within 12 hours of birth. This approach prevents more than 95% of all cases of vertical (mother to baby) transmission.

As with all RVF-supported programs, this program is being implemented entirely through the existing public health infrastructure by local health care workers, so that from the very start the Ministry of Health and local healthcare workers have full ownership of the program. Following the example of the RVF-supported MMR children’s vaccination program, the Ministry of Health is expected to assume full funding of the new hepatitis B program within 3 years of program inception.