KIEV (Reuters) - Poison mushrooms have killed 111 people in Ukraine this year and made more than 1,000 very sick, the health ministry said on Monday. Twenty-seven of the dead were children.

Authorities in neighbouring Russia report 73 deaths from mushroom poisoning and hundreds more people hospitalised, but say restrictions on mushroom sales and a publicity campaign are having an effect.

Scores of people die in Ukraine and Russia every year as a result of accidentally eating poisonous mushrooms, gathered in woods and fields.

``I am on the television practically every day and we distribute leaflets with illustrations of the different sorts of mushrooms,'' said Mikhail Chubirko, chief doctor in southern Russia's Voronezh, the country's worst affected region.

``Things are improving and last week we had only eight cases. We used to end up with the same people being poisoned twice. But it always gets worse when it rains.''

Ukrainian officials said they feared an upsurge in the number of poisonings in the autumn, when the passion for mushroom picking hits its peak. Mushroom picking is also an easy way for impoverished families to help make ends meet.