[Q fever in the Ukraine]

Q fever occurs in all geographical landscape zones and in most administrative regions of the Ukrainian SSR. The disease was diagnosed in those areas where no such cases had ever been registered. In the Kharkov region the examination of 425 fever patients with unclear diagnosis resulted in diagnosing 5 cases of Q fever. The proportion of seropositive persons among different professional groups of the population in the eastern part of the republic was determined (6.9% among workers of meat-packing factories, 8.7% among workers of fur- and wool-treating establishments, 5.2% among stock breeders). At the farms of the Kharkov, Poltava and Sumy regions the spread of infection among large cattle was 2.3% and among small cattle 5.6%. Rickettsial carriership revealed in hard ticks collected in the Kharkov region indicated the possibility of the existence of the natural focus of Q fever in this zone and increased the available information on the presence of the territories with the natural foci of this infection in the Ukraine.