Sridhar Vembu asks why babies need Hepatitis B vaccine, gets a lesson in healthcare from The Liver Doc | Trending

Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu has earned the internet’s disdain asking why babies need to be vaccinated against Hepatitis B. The billionaire entrepreneur took to the social media platform X yesterday to claim he is not anti-science while questioning the need for Hepatitis B vaccines for infants. CEO of Zoho Corporation Sridhar Vembu. (File) Social media users were quick to point out that Vembu could have arrived at the answer himself, if only he had bothered to do a quick Google search. While many mocked the CEO of Zoho, others slammed him for fear-mongering on the internet. Some high-profile voices from the field of medicine, like Dr Cyriac Ab Philips (aka The Liver Doc) gave Vembu a lesson in healthcare. Hepatitis B is a viral infection that attacks the liver and can cause the patient to develop chronic diseases, cirrhosis and even liver cancer. The virus is commonly spread through unprotected sex and sharing needles. However, it is important to note that it can also be passed mother to ba during childbirth. “Why are such young babies given vaccines such as Hepatitis B?” Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu asked on X. “It is not anti-vax or anti-science to ask such common sense questions. The very idea of science is to question dogma and vaccines have become near dogma now,” he added. The Liver Doc explainsDr Philips shared a detailed and comprehensive note on Hepatitis B while responding to Vembu’s question. “If a newborn catches hepatitis B virus, and typically catches it from passing through a birth canal, the mother’s birth canal that is contaminated with hepatitis B, they have a 90% chance of going on to develop chronic liver disease/cirrhosis, and liver cancer, which obviously is a fatal disease,” he explained. The Liver Doc further explained that before 1991, there was no recommendation of Hepatitis B vaccines for children. Every year, about 18,000 children below the age of 10 would catch the virus. The Liver Doc further clarified that the virus is not spread only through sexual contact. “Now about half of those children got it from their mothers as they passed through that birth canal that had hepatitis B virus in it. But the other half got it from relatively casual contact. Got it when a family member came, who was a silent carrier of hepatitis B, but didn’t know it, and then kissed the child. Or got it from sharing toothbrushes with somebody who had hepatitis B at school camp,” he said. “Since birth dose recommendation for hepatitis B came in 1991, we essentially eliminated this disease in less than 19-year-olds – something to be proud of. We saved millions in entire generations from dying of liver disease and cancer,” he wrote, underlining the importance of vaccinating babies against Hepatitis B. Take a look at the reply below: “Vaccination against hepatitis B virus infection is part of the national health policy in many countries, including India and rightly so,” he concluded.