HEALTH - Vaccine Debate Part Three: Herd Immunity and the Future

The concept of “herd immunity” - or community immunity when talking about human populations - describes the way widespread immunity from diseases protects the entire population.

Vaccination is currently the best way to achieve community immunity, because it is the safest and most effective way to immunize the greatest number of individuals.

Mass immunization works by reducing the number of available host bodies for the infection, and it can act as a shield for individuals who are not able to receive vaccination and are therefore vulnerable.

Among the human population, these vulnerable individuals may include people with severe allergies to a component of the vaccine, pregnant people, or people who are ill.

Among the pet population, older animals, sick animals, or animals with allergies might not be good candidates for vaccination.

Mass immunization can protect these vulnerable individuals by preventing outbreaks from finding a way into the population. This is called indirect protection, and in the case of pneumococcal and Haemophilus infections in humans, indirect protection reduced the diseases among people too old to be vaccinated, and dropped the total incidences of the disease by one- to two-thirds, according to Stanley Plotkin’s “Herd Immunity: A Rough Guide.”

I = Immunized

NI = Not Immunized

Orange boxes indicate the spread of the infection, and light green boxes indicate instances of indirect protection. This chart does not demonstrate the mathematical formula for determining herd immunity threshold, but it does demonstrate how community immunity works to protect the population.

What is the result of the increase in vaccine hesitancy among parents and pet owners?

It’s tough to say, but it doesn’t look good.

Research has found that where pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination rates have declined due to vaccine hesitancy and fears about vaccine safety, rates of infection have climbed by 10- to 100-times higher than in populations that still accept the vaccine. Recent outbreaks of measles also point to the risks of reduced community immunity.

The impacts of vaccine hesitancy among pet owners are much harder to track.

Pet owners are not required to vaccinate their pets, vaccine refusals are not tracked or monitored in pets like they are in children.

A study looking at the 1991 outbreak of canine distemper in Copenhagen found that the majority of infected dogs were not vaccinated. Distemper is a serious and highly contagious disease and widespread vaccination is one of the best ways to keep pets safe.

Vaccine hesitancy is not new, and likely not going away, as discussed in Part Two of this series.

Fortunately, vaccine science is developing in new and exciting directions.

New types of vaccines, such as live recombinant vaccines and DNA vaccines, are being developed. DNA vaccines are particularly revolutionary, have the potential to offer increased vaccine stability, and do not require the presence of an infectious agent (a concern that has contributed to vaccine hesitancy).

New vaccine delivery methods for humans include needle-free vaccines and Nanopatch technology that delivers vaccines to cells just below the skin surface.

With new outbreak prediction models available, new delivery methods, and new vaccine protocols being developed that take into account pet owner concerns about over-vaccination, hopefully levels of community immunity can remain high among people and pets.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

HEALTH - Are Ticks and Lyme Disease on the Rise?

With the arrival of warmer spring temperatures, combined with migratory birds and the increased travel of people with their pets, there is a growing abundance of the western blacklegged ticks carrying the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria - which causes Lyme disease - across North America.

According to Dr. Merten Pearson of Noah's Ark Pet Hospital in Amarillo, TX, his clinic has already seen six cases of Lyme disease in dogs this year – and the Panhandle region does not typically see tick-related illnesses. The vet cites travel of people with their pets as the most likely cause of Lyme in areas not typically known to have Lyme disease-carrying ticks.

Dr. Libby Fulton of Arrowhead Veterinary Clinic in Cochrane, AB has also seen a spike in tick-ridden dogs over the last couple of years.

In January of 2015, Fulton observed a tick embedded in a dog’s foot that hadn’t left the province or even the town of Cochrane – the earliest find of a tick in the season to date.

Historically, it was believed that Lyme-carrying ticks could only be found in Alberta dogs that had travelled outside of the province. But ticks know no borders.

“There are several vaccines on the market,” said Fulton, adding that her clinic only administers vaccines upon request to higher risk animals (dogs that travel to higher risk areas such as the Eastern seaboard, hunting dogs), although if the recent trend of more ticks each season was to continue she could foresee Calgary and area clinics eventually offering a vaccine as part of protocol.

“It has become a more pertinent issue even compared to last year…ticks are active at 4 degrees Celsius and we did not have that winter kill this year,” she said, adding that tick season has extended this year from possibly January through fall, rather than just over the course of May through July.

Dr. Kirsten Aarbo of the Okotoks Animal Care Centre cautions animal owners to be mindful of other pets carrying ticks.

“We had a lady in Priddis, AB who had over 200 ticks on her horse,” said Aarbo, who can also attest to the discovery of more ticks in recent years, adding that people should be vigilant when looking for ticks – which like to hide in skin folds and crevices.

While ticks carry other types of illnesses, including ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever – Lyme disease is of particular concern, as it is thought by Lyme communities on both sides of the border that there are actually far more human sufferers than formally diagnosed.

Dogs can bring the hard-to-find disease-carrying ticks in from outside, where it can easily fall off the dog and find its way onto the skin of a child or adult.

Lyme disease has been a controversial subject among human sufferers, many who feel as though they are falling through the cracks of a medical community that misdiagnoses Lyme due to archaic or inaccurate testing methods. While the medical community on both sides does not officially recognize the presence of Lyme disease in every province or state, Lyme sufferers beg to differ.

Much like with humans who contract the vector-borne illness, dogs may contract Lyme disease and nobody is the wiser – as dogs may not exhibit symptoms, or at least those easily identifiable; typical symptoms such as appetite loss, extreme lethargy, arthritis and swollen nodes and joints can easily be confused with other illnesses.

The website DogsandTicks reports over 691,000 confirmed cases of Lyme disease in dogs over the past five years. Their interactive map shows the incidence of Lyme and other diseases throughout Canada and the U.S.

The most important method of tick prevention is to check for ticks during the warmer months.

Click for tick removal methods.

By Lindsay Seewalt

Lindsay is an experienced journalist and mother of three whose heart and home is always open to a four-legged friend. With her Corgi, Angie, as household editor-in-chief, Lindsay gives back to the animal planet through the written word on anything and all ado about pets. She is passionate about topics regarding animal welfare and responsible pet ownership, which she aims to instill in both her readers and children to be compassionate animal lovers who are conscious and considerate that furry friends around the globe deserve a voice.

RESEARCH - Homeless Youth With Pets Less Likely to be Depressed, Use Hard Drugs

Pets are proving to be a viable form of protection for street youth – a buffer against everything from loneliness to substance abuse.

And authors behind the research out of the University of Guelph's Ontario Veterinary College shows having a pet even sees high-risk youth three times less likely to suffer from depression.

Sadly, those same pets often pose a roadblock to services sorely needed by street youth who – when pushed – will choose caring for their companion over pursuing their own well-being, says lead author Michelle Lem.

Michelle Lem DVM, MSc

"These pets are their only friends, the only way they've experienced unconditional love without judgement. These pets have saved their lives in many cases," Lem says. "By asking them to give up their pets to access the shelter, what you're doing as a social service provider is saying, 'I don't understand your relationship' and often it pushes people away."

That can often see a youth pitched further into struggles on the streets – an unfortunate and avoidable plight according to authors of the report recently published in the journal Anthrozoos.

Lem hopes a little understanding goes a long way and that the findings encourage agencies to reconsider the role a pet plays for a youth and more importantly to accommodate them when they reach out for help.

"They can't access shelters, they can't access some addictions treatment, they can't go into hospitalization, so they (pets) are barriers to accessing services,” said Lem, director of Community Veterinary Outreach, a volunteer group that provides veterinary services to homeless people in cities like Toronto, Guelph and Ottawa. “What we're trying to show is, yeah, they are barriers, but they also have some very positive impacts."

The study focused on 198 street youth (in Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston and Hamilton) in homeless shelters and drop-in centres. Of those 100 did not have pets and 98 did.

Those without pets were three times more likely to suffer from depression and those with pets less inclined to engage in risky behaviours like hard drug use, according to the findings.

The flip-side, however, saw pet ownership, albeit offering physical and psychosocial benefits, as an impediment to a youth’s ability to access a shelter bed for the night, housing, employment opportunities and other crucial social services.

The findings are no surprise to veteran social worker, Michelle Peterson.

As a front-line worker with street youth for many years, she saw many cases where pets gave a troubled youth purpose – to protect and care for a vulnerable animal – and often reduced chances of them being involved in risky behaviour.

Owning a pet also allowed some to provide a living being with the kindness and compassion they were denied. That rat, cat or dog, for instance, might represent “family” for a vulnerable teen and satisfy the “intrinsic need to lavish love on something that loves you unconditionally,” Peterson says.

“A lot experienced poor care in their own families and there is something magical that happens when they are able to care about something, when they can do what they wish happened to themselves. Often they take better care of their pet than themselves.”

She says some teens would make a pet a priority – some opting to feed a pet before themselves – and how simply having responsibility of ownership helped them steer clear of trouble.

“They have to keep it together to take care of their pets,” she says. “The pets definitely come first.”

Peterson, too, hopes more agencies find ways to offer services to youth who come with extra four-legged baggage. “They already have barriers with poverty but then you throw animals in and it creates more challenges,” she says.

While health benefits of pet ownership have long been recognized in other studies involving seniors who live alone, for instance, this is the first to look at how the bond benefits street youth.

By Nadia Moharib

Nadia Moharib is an animal lover who has adopted everything from birds to hamsters, salamanders, rabbits, fish and felines. She has written about all-things-pets for years and was a long-time editor of a pet magazine in a daily newspaper which featured a Q & A column, Ask Whit, penned by her pooch (ghost written, of course.) The serial dog owner lives in Calgary, Alberta and most days can be found at a dog park picking up after her rescue pooch, Scoots.

Summits for Urban Animal Strategies - October 19 - 22

SESSION SPOTLIGHT

Community Health and Wellness Model
Presentations and Discussion Panel, 13:30 October 20

Many agree the companion animal industry can work more collaboratively to create a better model for the health and wellness of pets and people in our communities. By working together, perhaps we can achieve such industry goals as: The establishment of a lifetime relationship with a healthcare provider; A higher level of care for companion animals through a proactive pet family; An industry wide approach to ‘One Health’ in our communities; The altering of all non-breeder animals; The permanent identification of all animals in the national database [responsibility, recovery & disease surveillance]; and, A reduction in the number of surrenders and abandonments in our communities.

As we have observed with the 2011 Care for Cats initiative, the implementation of an Urban Animal Strategy with support from all sectors of our industry can achieve a great result. A more complete model for Community Health and Wellness will require wide industry support from Animal Welfare, Animal Control and Enforcement and Animal Services [retailers, kennels, breeders, service providers and others] working together with those traditionally involved in Animal Health & Wellness. In this Summit conversation, can we find the ‘Big Idea(s)’ that will move us forward as professionals in our communities?

The featured panel discussion of the 2011 Summit will provide brief opening statements from each panelist to bring forward the issues they observe, the evidence they have [or don’t have] and the big ideas that we might consider. Once these presentations are complete, our conference moderator Diane Frank will facilitate a discussion that adds clarity to our thinking and prepares us for the OpenSpace sessions lead by Karen Dawson on Friday.

Scheduled Panellists

Moderator – Dr. Diane Frank, University of Montreal

Six of Canada’s thought leaders weigh in on Community Health and Wellness from their unique perspective:

Doug Raven – CEO of Canada’s largest provincial veterinary association (the Ontario VMA), which recently engaged its membership in a dialogue about how to improve access to veterinary healthcare for pet owners of limited financial means;

Drew Van Niekerk - A partner/owner in Canada’s largest practice aggregator/consolidator, exploring new models for delivering healthcare within Canadian communities;

Kristin Williams – The executive director of the Nova Scotia SPCA has been developing a collaborative model of healthcare delivery in Canada’s Atlantic Region;

Jason Coe - A recognized name in population studies at the University of Guelph is working to understand the problem of surrenders and abandonments in our communities from a sociological perspective;

Jim Sykes – Chief Operating Officer of OSPCA, an organization that has initiated innovations in both high-volume spay/neuter services and shelter health/wellness.

Louis McCann – The Executive Director of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council of Canada [PIJAC Canada] represents industry professionals across Canada who help establish relationships with healthcare professionals in each community.

ABOUT THE SUMMIT

Vision: To gather executive level thought leaders who can advance the state of the art in urban animal strategies

Mission: To promote strategies that build healthy communities for pets and people and to recognize those who achieve success

This sixth annual gathering of Industry leaders takes place from October 19 - 22 at the Fairmont Chateau, Montebello, Quebec.

As we are learning, Animal Health and Wellness is directly related to human health in our communities. For this reason the 2011 agenda may facilitate the most strategic conversation to be brought forward to a Summit.

The industry is changing, have your say.

View full agenda and learn more about the summit