[Seasonal problems of bacterial dysentery in the Dagestan ASSR]

During the period of 1959-1973 bacterial dysentery showed high morbidity rate in Daghestan in all seasons, this tendency existing both in urban and rural areas. The peculiarity of the monthly distribution of dysentery cases, observed all over the repulic, was the shift of the morbidity peak from August to September-October, and in some years even to November; this could be clearly observed from the analysis of the material as a whole and from the analysis of dysentery morbidity rates in rural and urban areas separately. This rise in dysentery morbidity rate in August--September might be due to the reassembling of children at various institutions after their mass return from summer resorts in the country, as well as to thhe influx of new children to crèches and kindergartens. Moreover, as the period of August--September is the bathing and fruit-harvesting season in Daghestan, a rise in morbidity rate in these months was obviously caused by the unsatisfactory level of sanitation and hygiene due to an acute deficiency of water.