Q-Net-Assess annual project meeting 2024 in Deventer (The Netherlands)

From the 28-30th of May 2024 over twenty veterinary researchers on Q fever from different partners visited the annual Q-Net-Assess meeting 2024, hosted by Royal GD, The Netherlands. During this meeting, researchers shared and discussed the progress of this ICRAD-project and spoke about the planning for the next years. A special guest at the meeting was former Dutch Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, Gerda Verburg. During her period in the Dutch government she was involved in the largest human Q fever outbreak ever described, with over 4,000 human patients and dairy goats as source of massive shedding of Coxiella burnetii. A compulsory vaccination campaign started (2008) and since 2016, all Dutch dairy goat farms are Cb BTM PCR negative. On the third and final day of the Q-Net-Assess meeting, after a lot of progress on the project, the researchers were guided through the Royal GD laboratory and visited a Dutch dairy goat farm to get an impression about Dutch dairy goat farming. The Q-Net-Assess project aims to generate the most comprehensive understanding of C. burnetii genetic variation to date, and the implications of this variation for zoonotic risk, livestock pathogenicity and Q fever control. The consortium consists of researchers from the Moredun Research Institute and APHA (UK), Sciensano and DGZ Vlaanderen (Belgium), ANSES and INRAE (France), NEIKER (Spain), the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (Germany) and Royal GD (The Netherlands).