Stroke incidence and therapy represents still amajor problem.Accomplishment of the functional stroke programme is a necessary goal for the improvement of present unfavourable results of statistics (the third most frequent cause of death, high morbidity). Since 1998, according to the recommendations of theMinistry of Health of the Czech Republic and that of the Czech Neurological Society of J. E. Purkyne a network of stroke units and stroke centres has been built. Liberec hospital belongs to the third type of hospitals where the stroke centre should be established. As one of the primary steps in the accomplishment of our stroke programme we consider elaboration of the stroke protocol as a temporal and methodological guideline and its introduction into the practice. Its relevance is evaluated in our present paper.

        Key words: stroke, stroke programme, stroke centre, stroke protocol