Intervet facilitates development of global small animal vaccination strategy

In September 2005, Intervet International organized the international symposium Canine and Feline vaccination – A scientific re-appraisal, in conjunction with the University of Utrecht’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. 

The two-day meeting, held in Prague, Czech Republic, was designed to provide a platform for leading experts to shape an effective strategy for pet vaccination for the future. 

Vaccination is an area of veterinary medicine where change is prominent and the field of immunology, like many of the infectious agents it looks at, is evolving rapidly. 

The symposium brought together over 150 prominent people in this field, including many of the world’s leading virologists and epidemiologists, to explore issues surrounding modern small animal vaccination.

Topics discussed included: the changing profiles of infectious diseases; the latest research findings on vaccine side-effects and advances in the understanding of immunological mechanisms; developments in vaccine technology and vaccination protocols. 

One of the important themes to emerge from the meeting was that even though too few animals in the population as a whole are being vaccinated, some individual animals are being vaccinated too often.

New vaccines which provide longer durations of immunity and use more novel routes of administration are already available in many countries. 

Current scientific thinking indicates that vaccinating an animal with every component, every year is no longer a realistic option and that new vaccination protocols using products offering extended durations of immunity are the way forward. 

The conclusions drawn in the symposium emphasized the need for continued and concerted effort from all involved - academia, veterinary practitioners and industry. And that only by working together can an effective, globally coherent vaccination strategy be reached. The aim must be to create a clear and consistent vaccination message, based on robust science, which can be adopted around the globe.