Guinea-Bissau: US-funded trial would deprive 7,000 newborns of hepatitis B vaccine

The University of Southern Denmark gave the green light in early October 2026 to a US-funded vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau that would leave half of 14,000 newborns without a hepatitis B vaccine for their first six weeks of life. The dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Jakob Grauslund, confirmed the decision, as reported by Medical Daily and Africanews, citing the British newspaper The Guardian and the American center CIDRAP.

Two groups of 7,000 babies

The protocol stipulates that 7,000 children will receive the dose at birth, along with tuberculosis and polio vaccines, while the other 7,000 will follow the national Bissau-Guinean schedule, which does not begin until six weeks of age. The study is funded by $1.6 million from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), granted in December 2025 without the usual call for tenders, according to CIDRAP. It is led by Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn of the Bandim Health Project, a Danish team long established in the country, which claims that no child will receive fewer vaccines than current national policy provides.

What the WHO calls irreversible harm

The health stakes are well-documented. More than 12% of Bissau-Guinean adults live with chronic hepatitis B, according to the World Health Organization. An infant infected at birth has about a 90% risk of becoming a chronic carrier, and 15 to 25% of chronic carriers die prematurely from liver cancer or liver failure, CIDRAP points out. The WHO therefore recommends a first dose within 24 hours of delivery. In a statement on February 16, 2026, it deemed that delaying this dose by six weeks would expose newborns to "serious and potentially irreversible" harm, and estimated that a country's lack of resources cannot justify depriving children of care whose efficacy is established.

A trial already stopped once by Bissau

This trial was halted in early 2026 after a wave of protests from American researchers and elected officials. Bissau-Guinean Foreign Minister Joao Bernardo Vieira had then told Reuters that it would not take place, "a final point," according to the quote cited by CIDRAP. A revised protocol was, however, approved by the national ethics committee during the summer of 2026. The government's final authorization has still not been granted, Jakob Grauslund specified: the study therefore cannot begin, and Bissau has not said when it will make a decision.

Africa CDC opposes the trial. Its official Wessam Mankoula indicates that discussions are continuing between the American and Bissau-Guinean governments. For Colette Delawalla, founder of the organization Stand Up for Science, quoted by Medical Daily, it is a "flagrant violation of human rights." Opponents point out that such a protocol would be unthinkable in a wealthy country.

The American political context weighs on the matter. At the end of 2025, advisors to health official Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed the universal recommendation for the birth dose for American infants; Christine Stabell Benn had been a consultant for this federal committee, reports the Associated Press, cited by Medical Daily.

Guinea-Bissau, for its part, plans to introduce the birth dose for all its newborns by 2028. The question posed in Bissau is therefore simple: who decides what is acceptable for African children, and according to what standards.