A key government advisory committee will vote Wednesday on whether to recommend delaying the first hepatitis B vaccine shot, currently given to babies at birth, by at least one month.

Experts fear delaying the shot would lead to more children developing chronic liver infections and complications, setting back decades of public health work that has almost eliminated infant hepatitis B cases in the U.S.

The recommendation to vaccinate newborns came after vaccines had been available for nearly a decade for high risk people , but had yet to decrease the infection rates. Following the recommendation in 1991, cases in children and teens dropped 99%.

Giving newborns their first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine almost immediately helps ensure that they don’t contract the disease from their

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