Vaccination Failure
One of my early lessons with the shelter project in Turkiye was vaccine failure.
All my life I have been “vaccine girl” . If there is a way to prevent infectious disease
you would be crazy not to take it. And the fact that I have never had diphtheria, polio
or any of the other nasties I have been vaccinated against led me to believe that
vaccines were invincible.
My reality check was when I met the puppies in the picture. They had distemper
despite being vaccinated. I simply couldn’t get my head around it.
Distemper is a truly nasty disease, highly infectious, it rips through canine
communities leaving death & destruction in its wake. It affects multiple systems in the
body and is very difficult to treat. Infected dogs who recover can continue to shed the
virus for many months after recovery. It spreads through coughs, sneezes, barks &
contaminated surfaces such as food bowls.Symptoms vary from respiratory to gastric progressing to neurological and death,
always beginning with lethargy and loss of appetite.
The shelter workers are fastidious beyond belief, they carry out all the necessary risk
assessments and trigger protocols as needed to keep the shelter safe and disease
free. Every dog is checked each day, sometimes up to three times. They miss nothing
& see everything.
In five years as a community carer one of the workers told us they had never had a distemper
outbreak. So, what went wrong?
Nothing, it was purely bad luck. Horrible, gut wrenching, heart breaking bad luck.
What was the puppies chance of survival?
I was told as low as 20% & my stomach rolled. Our poor babies. Why did the vaccine not
work?
Was the vaccine faulty?
Not at all.
Pups get a good old dose of maternally derived antibodies from their mum. This keeps
them safe for the first few weeks of their lives. These antibodies are shared with them by
mama dog through the placenta and later through the first milk they take from her.
There may be insufficient antibodies to prevent disease but too many antibodies may
interfere with vaccines. Blocking their effectiveness.
Vaccines stimulate immunity in the pup, this doesn’t happen right away. There is a space
of time where the pup can become infected with the disease after the vaccine is
delivered.
The pups immune system may be suppressed through infections. Even nutritional
deficiency can compromise the efficiency of the vaccine.
So, it is all a bit more complicated than I thought.
The thought of the virus spreading, & losing 80% of patients was too much to bear. We
knuckled down and did everything we could to save them. We supported their little
immune systems and treated any symptoms and secondary infections that developed.
The shelter was disinfected to within an inch of its life.
Happy to say isn’t the right phrase to use, relieved is possibly the best way to describe
our response to the virus not spreading and losing 20% of patients instead of almost all
of them.
I reach out to fellow rescuers of homeless overseas dogs whenever I see them battling
with viral disease and loss of life after vaccination. The blame we heap on ourselves is
unbearable. I reflect often on the high suicide rate among vets & shelter workers and acknowledge what a difficult job they have.
We must hold each other up because if a little one arrives carrying disease without
displaying symptoms all we can do is our best, which we do every day. Isolate new pups,
build them up, vaccinate them & hope that disease didn’t get to them before we did.