WSAVA has issued a response to stories about Leptospira vaccination that appeared in the Sunday Telegraph and in the Mail on Sunday on 3 July 2016.

WSAVA response

The WSAVA Vaccination Guidelines Group is aware of an article published recently in the Sunday Telegraph about canine Leptospira vaccination.

The article states that ‘WSAVA is urging owners not to use Nobivac L4 vaccine on puppies under 12 weeks old’.

This statement is blatantly untrue.  The WSAVA would never ‘urge owners’ and would never make recommendations about individual named commercial products.

The current 2015 WSAVA guidelines provide veterinarians with evidence-based scientific recommendations on vaccination.

The current 2015 WSAVA recommendation for Leptospira vaccines is that when these non-core vaccines are chosen for an individual dog (on the basis of national or regional knowledge about the prevalence and risks of leptospirosis) they should be given from 8 weeks of age in puppies, with a second dose 2 – 4 weeks later and then an annual booster vaccine.

On the subject of generic L2 versus L4 vaccines, the VGG states that ‘When a Leptospira vaccine is used in high risk dogs, the commercial vaccine that contains all of the serogroups that cause disease in the dog in that region, if available, should be used'.

The WSAVA guidelines are publicly available on-line and this journalist has clearly not undertaken adequate research before publishing this article.

http://www.wsava.org/educational/vaccination-guidelines-group

Article courtesy of BSAVA (https://www.bsava.com/News/tabid/315/ArticleID/612/WSAVA-response-to-Leptospira-vaccination-media-stories.aspx).