Prevention of hepatitis B
Hygiene measures
It is important to have safe sex practices.
Drug addicts should never share needles. Cactus Montreal, the first to offer a needle exchange in North America to intravenous drug users, also offers condoms. This type of intervention reduces the transmission of HIV, hepatitis and other types of infections.
The adoption of the principle of universal precautions by all those working in healthcare settings.
vaccination
The vaccine for the prevention of hepatitis B is made by a yeast, Saccharomyces cerevesiæ, which produces hepatitis B surface antigen. It is not the whole virus8.
Since 2013, hepatitis B (and hepatitis A) vaccine has been included in the routine infant immunization schedule. It is also administered in the 4th year of primary school. Vaccines are not mandatory in Canada.
In France, we opted for compulsory vaccination of newborns. This raised quite a bit of controversy (see below). Vaccination of newborns is no longer compulsory in France, but recommended7.
Some people believed there was a link between the hepatitis B vaccine and demyelinating diseases like multiple sclerosis. Research has shown an identical proportion of vaccination in patients with and without the disease9.