Ranking alongside Ebola, HIV and antibiotic resistance is a major global health threat entirely of our own making known as “vaccine hesitancy”.

This reluctance among a minority to immunise their children against preventable diseases has been named by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as one of the top 10 health threats of the year, already resulting in a 30 per cent rise in cases of measles.

Yet it goes further: anti-vaccine attitudes are something we are also seeing in veterinary practices among some pet owners, and the repercussions are just as serious.

Vaccination levels among puppies in the UK, for example, have fallen from more than 80 per cent in 2011 to 75 per cent while among kittens, they fell from 70 per cent to just 65 per cent, according to a recent survey.

This is especially worrying for veterinarians, who aim to control disease by immunising at least 70 per cent of the population to develop “herd immunity” and limit the potential for disease to take hold.