Some 20 people who contracted Q-fever during the recent epidemic are planning to sue the goat farms where they believe they became infected, news agency ANP reports on Monday.

Lawyer Ivo Sindam has set up a foundation – Stichting Q-koortsclaim – to take legal action, and the first cases are set to take place before the summer, according to media reports. Dozens of people who contracted Q-fever now have chronic health problems but some can identify the farm where they became infected, Sindam says.
Q-fever was a serious problem on Dutch goat farms between 2007 and 2010. Over 40,000 goats were killed in an effort to eradicate the disease. Q-fever also killed at least 19 people and a further 4,000 became ill, according to a report by Noord-Brabant province last November.
The national ombudsman Alex Brenninkmeijer is currently looking into the way the government dealt with the epidemic.