A thesis to be submitted to the Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, School of Allied Health Sciences, and College of Health Science Addis Ababa University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Of Masters in Diagnostic and P

Background: Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The diagnosis of TB is highly relies sputum smear microscopy. It requires three sputum sample examinations over two days (conventional approach) and patient often abandons the diagnostic procedure owing to costs and inconvenience involved in multiple visits. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends same day sputum microscopy (spot-spot) for the diagnosis of smear positive tuberculosis. As there is limited study on the same day sputum microscopy in our country this study aim to evaluate same day sputum smear performance for the detection of pulmonary and multi-drug resistance tuberculosis