Spatio-temporal aspects of tularemia in Southern Moravia, Czech Republic

Abstract

ABSTRACT:In the last decade, apart from the rise of numbers of positive hares and infected humans, we have been witnessing some spread of natural foci of tularemia into more northern areas of Southern Moravia, Czech Republic. It was, therefore, the aim of this paper to evaluate the spatio-temporal development of tularemia in Southern Moravia (in a selected study area of 130 × 90 km) using a geographic information system. Correlation analysis resulted in finding that the geographic distribution of natural foci of tularemia in any year correlated with the distribution in any other year of the study period of 1994-2001. The coefficients of correlation of all possible combinations of distribution in years 1994-2001 vary from 0.38 to 0.96 (n = 3 700, P = 0.01). The closer the years, the greater the correlation of distribution of tularemia. It can be stated that, in the study area during the period of eight years, tularemia persisted rather in the same locations but, as the coefficients of correlation do not equal 1.0, some variation in the distribution could be observed.