Hepatitis B baby threat

A PREGNANT WOMAN who has hepatitis B can protect her newborn from being infected with the deadly virus at birth — but mom and baby need to get tests and shots at the right time.

That’s where Yujing Dai comes in. A counselor at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center in Flushing, Queens, Dai meets with immigrant women throughout their pregnancy, calls them at home and clears up many misconceptions about the virus, which is spread by infected bodily fluids.

“Sometimes they don’t even know they have hep B before I talk to them, and so they have no idea about what hep B is,” said Dai (photo below), 26.

The advice is crucial — infants who get hepatitis B have a 90% chance the disease will become chronic, which can cause serious liver damage and sometimes lead to cancer, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. People infected as adults have a 2% to 6% chance of the virus becoming chronic.

Dai’s work is part of a nationwide effort to lower hepatitis B rates in the U.S. among Asians, who are disproportionately affected by the disease.

Asians and people from the Pacific Islands account for more than half of the 1.2 million Americans living with chronic hepatitis B, but they make up less than 5% of the country’s population, according to the CDC.

The center where Dai works, which also has a location in Manhattan’s Chinatown, started a program for mothers with hepatitis B after five babies born to the patients were infected. Nationally, about 800 babies are infected at birth each year, according to CDC estimates.

Since 2011, no infants delivered by health center doctors have gotten the disease through perinatal transmission.

First, women need to get regular tests to check the amount of hepatitis B in their blood — if the viral load is high, they may need to take medication during pregnancy to lower it. Within 24 hours after birth, the baby needs to get two shots — an immunoglobulin to counteract any contact with the virus and the first shot of a vaccine.

Second and third doses of the vaccine are needed during the baby’s first year, and as a toddler, the child should get a blood test to see if the shots were effective.