Failure to Administer Vitamin K Injection to Newborns Risky, Bleeding Risk Increases by 47%

A highly serious and important medical study regarding the health of newborns has come to light. According to a report by 'Aaj Tak', failure to administer a Vitamin K injection to a newborn after birth can prove to be very risky for their health. A recent large-scale study has clarified that children who are not given this injection at birth face a 47 per cent increase in the risk of bleeding during the first six months of life. These shocking findings have been published in the prestigious medical journal 'JAMA'.

This extensive research was conducted in America, where medical records of a total of 52,40,780 children born in various hospitals and health systems across 50 US states between January 2017 and December 2025 were studied in depth. By analysing the data of these millions of children, researchers sought to determine how often bleeding problems occurred in children who received the Vitamin K injection at birth compared to those who did not.

A worrying trend also emerged during the research. The number of children in America not receiving the Vitamin K injection at birth is steadily increasing. In 2017, this figure was 3.1 per cent, which rose to 6.8 per cent by 2025. During this period, a significant increase in bleeding cases was observed among children who had not been given the injection.

According to the findings of the study, children who did not receive Vitamin K faced not only the risk of general bleeding but also a 2.4 times higher risk of 'intracranial bleeding' (bleeding inside the brain) compared to normal children. Furthermore, it was noted that the risk of death due to bleeding while admitted to the hospital at birth was much higher in children who did not receive the injection. Often, due to a lack of information, parents refuse this injection, or in some small hospitals, this vaccine is not available, which can prove fatal for the newborn.

Vitamin K plays a critical role in the blood clotting process in the human body. When an injury occurs or blood is shed anywhere in the body, the formation of blood clots is necessary to stop it, a process known as clotting. Vitamin K activates this process. Newborns naturally have very low levels of Vitamin K at birth. Additionally, the amount of Vitamin K in breast milk is limited. In the early days of birth, the baby's intestines do not contain the bacteria that help produce Vitamin K. Due to all these factors, newborns are at the highest risk of bleeding caused by Vitamin K deficiency.

Vitamin K is a type of fat-soluble vitamin primarily responsible for the blood clotting process. Historically, the method of administering an injection at birth has been accepted as a standard medical protocol for decades to prevent Vitamin K Deficiency Bleeding (VKDB) in newborns. The primary objective of this protocol is to prevent severe and life-threatening bleeding in the first few weeks of an infant's life, as the baby's body is unable to produce sufficient Vitamin K on its own during this period.