AIM To analyze the frequency and distribution of human brucellosis in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period 2001-2008, and measures and activities undertaken for prevention and control of the disease. METHOD In this descriptive, retrospective study, we used official reports on infectious diseases from public health institutes at the federal and cantonal level, as well as epidemiological surveys. For comparison with animal brucellosis cases, we used the distribution data from veterinary surveillance. RESULTS Since 2001, the number of infected people has rapidly increased and brucellosis has become a very important public health problem. In the period 2001-2008, there were 1639 human brucellosis cases and the number of cases increased every year. The morbidity rate over the study period ranged from 3.8 to 33.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. According to epidemiological surveys, in villages human brucellosis was transmitted mostly by contact with infected animals and their products, and in cities by consumption of dairy products made from contaminated, unpasteurized milk. When test-and-slaughter control approach was used, the prevalence of seropositive livestock was 4.6% and approximately 70,000 animals were slaughtered after testing between 2001 and 2008. From 1 June 2009, this approach was replaced with mass vaccination of sheep and goats. CONCLUSION The large number of human brucellosis cases and seropositive livestock poses a very serious problem for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The solution may be the introduction of mass vaccination.

We discuss the formation and evolution of transient coherent excitonic states induced by ultrashort laser irradiation of metal surfaces supporting the surface and image potential bands (typically the low index surfaces of Cu and Ag). These states, which evolve into the image potential states in the course of screening of primary optically excited electron–hole pair, may play the role of early intermediate states in pump–probe spectroscopies of surfaces (e.g. two‐photon‐photoemission or sum‐frequency generation) if the formation of image charge density proceeds on the time scale of the order of or longer than the pump–probe pulse duration and delay. In this regime a pump–probe experiment may yield information on the characteristics of such states rather than the states in relaxed image potential bands. Time scales of the various stages of these processes are estimated using an exactly solvable model of surface screening.