By Mrinalika Roy and Michael Erman

Dec 5 (Reuters) – Vaccine makers expressed concern on Friday’s decision by a U.S. advisory panel to scrap its long-standing recommendation that all infants receive a hepatitis B vaccine at birth, a shift that public health experts fear will undermine decades of public health advances.

Merck, whose Recombivax HB has been a staple of the U.S. childhood immunization program, said it was “deeply concerned” by the decision of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), warning it “puts infants at unnecessary risk of chronic infection, liver cancer and even death.”

The company said the universal birth dose, which was instituted in 1991, has driven a 99% drop in acute hepatitis B cases in children and young adults and argued there is no evi

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