Abstract: Objective In order to investigate the functions of hospitals in grass roots to find out the infectious tuberculosis cases in Yinzhou Block.Methods To analyse the numbers of bacteriological positive tuberculosis cases from the tuberculosis registration book from 1994 to 2003 and broke by the sources of different level hospitals.Results There were 3574 tuberculosis cases reported in 10 years.Of them, 1458 cases were bacteriological positive cases.436(29.9%) positive cases were reported from hospitals at county level or above,1022(70.1%) were reported from hospitals in grass roots (central township hosipitals and townships hosipitals).The notification rate of smear-positive cases increased form 12.61/100000 to 27.63/100000 in the duration of 1994 to 2003.The sampling checking of sputum smear examination in 2000 showed that the quality of sputum examination had reached the standard set by Ministry of Health in hospitals at county level or above,while it slightly lower than the standard in grass roots.Conclusion The sputum smear examination should be one of the routine clinical examination works in grass roots hospitals.And the hospitals in grass roots has been a main strength to find out the infectious tuberculosis cases.

Key words: Pulmonary tuberculosis/prevention and control