New goat flu outbreaks in Netherlands, 6 killed

BEIJING, Dec. 16 (Xinhuanet) -- A new epidemic goat flu (or called Q-fever) has struck the Netherlands since last week.

An estimated 2,300 people have succumbed to Q-fever this year in the country and six have died.

According to Dutch experts, Q-fever is caused by bacteria released when pregnant goats or sheep have spontaneous abortions.

A relative study shows that many animals can carry this kind of bacteria, but contact with infected goats is believed to be the main source of human infections.

The Dutch government said Thursday it planned to slaughter all pregnant infected goats, which carry the bacteria in high concentrations. It was not immediately clear how many goats will be killed.

"There's nowhere external to turn to for expert advice, because it's a unique situation," said the government spokesman Thijs van Son.

Q-fever infections usually occur in a cluster in one year and then peter out the next. But the Dutch outbreak has been growing and spreading out over agricultural areas for three years despite increasingly strong measures to contain it.

“That hasn't happened before,” Van Son said, "not in Europe or anywhere else."

He said that so far the outbreak is not known to have spread to neighboring Germany or Belgium.

Van Son said one theory as to why the outbreak has been so severe in the Netherlands is the large numbers of animals per farm, combined with the density of the Dutch human population, which is one of the highest in the world.

The Dutch government is researching whether an Australian human vaccine not yet approved in Europe could be used in the Netherlands.