A national register of historic and contemporary anthrax foci.

Anthrax in Russia has for a long time posed a serious problem for public health and veterinary services. At the beginning of the century, 40-60 thousand cases of this infection were annually reported in the country in agricultural animals and about 10-20 thousand cases in people where each fourth (25%) was dying. In the Russian Federation the registration of anthrax foci is obligatory for veterinary as well as for sanitary-epidemiological services. So our initial project, funded by the International Technical and Scientific Center in Moscow, has envisaged the collection of all data of known anthrax foci, including the village name, agricultural council, region, oblast and year of occurrence. The objective is to assemble a reference handbook, "Register of stable anthrax sites in the Russian Federation", containing organized information on more than 10 000 anthrax foci occurring during the past 100 years. Such a study makes it possible to identify regions characterized by the highest concentrations of stationary anthrax sites in Russia, to identify trends in expressed activity of such sites through the periodic emergence of disease in humans and animals, and to determine the factors contributing to the formation of such trends. In doing this, it makes it possible to develop contingency plans for different risk locations (i.e. high risk of persistent infection, high risk of sporadic occurrence, low risk areas, etc.) in terms of anthrax in Russia, to identify high risk areas and develop a differentiated strategy of vaccination and other control strategies, and to develop preventive recommendations to reduce risk in high risk areas. It is now important to develop the second step of the project: to develop in depth studies of particular clusters to determine which factors are associated with Russian anthrax outbreaks. Maps will greatly enhance the value of this work in terms of spatial analysis. Furthermore, this supplementary project will allow the incorporation of powerful Geographic Information System (GIS) electronic mapping technology so that natural geographic features, such as soil type, climate, etc., can be compared with anthrax distributions in Russia using standard GIS and statistical analysis. At the present time, it is imperative to develop a detailed understanding of the world's distribution of anthrax and what geographic factors determine its prevalence.