Drastic measures are underway in the Netherlands in order to prevent the spread of Q fever to humans. Thousands of goats and sheep at infected farms in the country will soon be slaughtered.
In June, the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment reported an outbreak of Q fever, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The disease has spread to one-third of the country. More than 2,200 people in the Netherlands have contracted the disease so far this year. In 2007, less than 200 cases were reported.
While other animals carry the Coxiella burnetii bacteria, cattle, sheep and goats are the primary carriers of the infectious zoonotic disease. It is estimated between 15,000 and 20,000 goats and sheep will be slaughtered in the cull.
The government has taken numerous preventative measures, including vaccination programs for farms with more than 50 sheep or goats, transport restrictions and various hygiene measures. Vaccinated animals will be tested and those contaminated, will be killed. All pregnant or infected goats and sheep that have not been vaccinated at infected farms will also be killed, whether or not they have the disease. Depending on the results of the vaccination program and testing, the cull may be expanded.
Q Fever
Q fever is usually contracted by breathing in contaminated droplets from infected animals. The disease spreads particularly fast when infected animals give birth, which generally occurs between February and May. Because C. burnetii is resistant to heat, common disinfectants and drying, the bacteria can survive for long periods of time.
While Q fever in humans can be treated with antibiotics, the disease may cause premature births or miscarriages in pregnant women and in rare cases, can cause death. People with weakened immune systems or heart valve issues are at greatest risk. So far this year, six people in the Netherlands have died.
Goat photo Efras
Sheep photo Malene Thyssen
Very sad news.
Did the vets not actually report that the very act of culling animals with Q-Fever, can infect the slaughtermen and cause infection to be made
airborne? Contamination by blood, body fluids or similar can result in infection. During the Foot and Mouth Crisis in the UK, soldiers who were slaughtermen, and people residing on the route that the vehicles drove along, taking the carcasses away from the farms, also got infected. These
vehicles were designed to hold Foot and Mouth. Still the pathogen got out.
It can also be caught by drinking raw milk or eating unpasteurised cheese. I just do not understand this culling of goats and sheep.
Whenever an outbreak happens in Australia they simply vaccinate the human
population. Outbreaks there usually occur in the dry, dusty cattle and sheep pens used for mass round-up for transfer to railway trains or road-trains.
Stressed animals pass urine and faeces.
Simply put, humans catch Q-fever from animals and there is no human to human infection. It is a very difficult and rare disease to actually catch directly from an animal. So one has to wonder why so many people have been infected. Has nobody stopped the sale of raw goats milk and cheese? Do the people there in those villages really believe that pasteurisation of milk is somehow bad and inferior to RAW milk? There is a scandal here, and you really should be pointing fingers at the Government Vets and the Agriculture industry.
In Australia, they have an ongoing HUMAN vaccination programme and have done so for 40 years. I have survived Q fever, but have the newly discovered variant that is Q fever Syndrome which resembles Chronic Fatigue. I was a shepherd. This Disease is well known by those governments that have had Bio-weapons. They created a weaponised version of it. Q-fever, is a hardy ricksettial
Typhus Type pathogen. Shepherds, farmworkers, slaughtermen, and wool workers can get this disease. It will lay dormant for years until disturbed and is ingested by breathing in dust, or getting an aerosol spray in the face when lambing. . It can be ingested during parturition birth)or lambing,
calving or birth of any warm blooded animal. It is not confined to sheep and goats.Vets in UK can be vaccinated, but workers do not get vaccinated as a matter of course. In Australia everybody in the community gets gets vaccinated when there is an outbreak. That solves the problem. This microbe can be airborne in only very special circumstances, as happened in Solihull in Birmingham around 1990. 167 people were infected in a very urban setting. The Heartlands Hospital, Birmingham and Queensland University of Australia did research as to why this disease of warm blooded animals was infecting humans in an urban setting. They concluded that a wind blowing over the sheep and goat small holdings in April, the time of lambing, blew the pathogen over the urban area. One single
pathogen is all it takes to be infected with this disease. This study led to the classification of the Q-Fever Syndrome.
I was infected in 1977 and I was never cured of it. I developed that Syndrome type of infection as did the majority of those in the Solihull study. Research bio weapons and Q fever and see comes up. This disease will cause cardiomyopathy and a hepatic illness. It also affects bones in some cases. It is fatal in about 5% of cases.
Otherwise in a great deal of cases about 90% it will simply be treated like a flu, but unfortunately unless the Doctor knows what he is dealing with, he will not use Tetracycline which is the only known antibiotic that is useful in the early stage onset. Why are the Vets killing the animals then when vaccination for humans exists? This is an outrage. the senseless killing of the animals. Vaccinate the human population, it is easier. You cannot eradicate Q-fever, because it exists in all warm blooded animals, where it is a mild disease and has no effect on production.
Your investigators should be asking questions of the medical people and the vets. They are pulling the wool over the people’s eyes. What are the people of the affected area doing to get infected? eating raw goats cheese? Drinking Raw milk? Making sheeps blood puddings? This makes no sense, ask the Australians.
Thanks to Allan for the thoroughly described background to this monstrous act. The timing of this cull should give warning to all who are awake. It is nothing more than bloodletting on a massive scale. The last time it happened was in 2001 when both UK and Europe suffered the funeral pyres of Foot and Mouth disease. It bodes ill for 2010.