The control of chronic infectious patients with pulmonary tuberculosis in a rural area of China

Abstract The aim of this study was to reduce the prevalence of chronic infectious cases (CIC) in a rural area of China by fully supervised chemotherapy of newly diagnosed smear-positive cases and by reducing the number of existing old CIC through fully supervised retreatment. From 1980 to 1985, 83.3% of 1828 new, smear-positive cases were given fully supervised chemotherapy. In 1980, 95.2% of 565 old CIC started fully supervised retreatment. The prevalence of CIC had dropped from 40.5 100 000 in 1980 to 6.7 100 000 by the end of 1986.