successfully 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.

In June 2007 RVF began an ambitious nationwide 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 ofthe Republic of Georgian, the RVF is providing the training and materials which 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 are tested at their first prenatal check-up. If rapid screening is positive, more extensive and definitive testing is performed in Georgian Reference Laboratories. This definitive testing, also funded by the RVF, allows 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. The program in Goergia is off to a promising start. In the first two months of the program – June and July – 13,500 pregnant women were screened, of which 400 were identified as hepatitis B carriers. During the same period almost 100 newborns were given HBIG as well as the hepatitis B vaccine..

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 conduct training seminars for the various stake-holders. Working collaboratively with the Ministry of Health and the Georgian National CDC, these training sessions ensure that the goals of the program – the prevention of severe, even fatal viral infection in the newborn – are achieved.