Vaccination update August 2019

Hepatitis B in at risk babies

Babies born to mothers infected with hepatitis B require a course of hep B vaccination. The first dose is given within 24 hours in the maternity units, but the rest of the course is provided within general practice. Monovalent Hep B is given at 4 weeks of age, followed by the 6-in-1 (hexavalent) vaccine at 8, 12 and 16 weeks. Practices are advised not to delay the primaries if the monovalent due at 4 weeks is late.

Public Health England have published this aide memoire on the hep B selective vaccination programme for at risk infants.

All babies born to mothers infected with hepatitis B should be tested at 1 year of age to check if they’ve become infected with the virus. In London, this should be tested for with a dried blood spot (DBS) test kit which does not require a paediatric phlebotomy appointment and can be done by a clinician in general practice.

Kits can be ordered from england.dbskits-london@nhs.net and will be delivered to the surgery. DBS tests are free to order and to use. A visual guide for how to complete the DBS sample is available here.

Guidance on how to participate, manually enter and declare achievement for this service is available, activity and achievement should be recorded monthly.

Further information about providing hepatitis B vaccination as part of the GP Contract is available from the BMA.

CHIS-2-GP notification project

From August onwards all GP practices in London will receive weekly notifications of children due and overdue vaccinations from Child Health Information Services (CHIS). NHS England London have confirmed to us that the information will only be sent from an @nhs.net address at the CHIS Hub to a generic practice @nhs.net address and that no notifications are sent to GP practices without a generic practice @nhs.net address. They have also confirmed that all CHIS Hubs have over the last three months validated the list of generic @nhs.net addresses on the distribution list. However, if you have recently changed or plan to change your practice’s generic @nhs.net address, please let your CHIS Hub know.

Also, from October onwards GP practices in London will receive the list of children who need influenza vaccination. It is hoped that this will help practices identify patients that require call/ recall for routine vaccinations.

Last updated : 21 Aug 2019

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