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3d ago

CDC Awards No-Bid $1.6 Million Grant for Newborn Hepatitis B Trial in Guinea-Bissau

The award bypassed the CDC’s usual ethics review, drawing internal outrage with Tuskegee comparisons.

Picture taken on March 9, 2019 shows an aerial view of the presidential palace (top C), and buildings around the Praca Che Guevara square (bottom C) with the adjacent France-Guinea Bissau cultural centre (bottom, C-R) in Bissau, capital city of Guinea-Bissau, the day before the country's parliament election. - Voters in Guinea-Bissau are to elect a new parliament on March 10, 2019 in the hopes of ending a three-year-old leadership deadlock in a country that has become more renowned for drug trafficking than its cashew nuts. (Photo by EMILIE IOB / AFP) (Photo credit should read EMILIE IOB/AFP via Getty Images)
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Overview

  • The five-year randomized study will enroll about 14,000 newborns to compare receiving a hepatitis B dose at birth to not receiving one at birth.
  • Researchers plan to track deaths, illnesses, and developmental outcomes, with the first 500 infants followed for five years and most others for under two years.
  • The University of Southern Denmark team says Guinea-Bissau’s national ethics committee approved the trial, which is slated to begin early next year.
  • A CDC official said Health and Human Services directed the agency to approve the unsolicited, no-bid contract and promised special funding.
  • Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has praised the researchers, and one team leader served on a Kennedy-appointed committee that voted to end universal U.S. newborn birth-dose recommendations.