Following on from the success of the first edition, CUP has produced an attractive 2nd edition of Monica Cheesbrough's invaluable aid for practicing laboratories in tropical settings. The book provides both the authority of a textbook for teaching and training, and the practical detail required of a laboratory manual likely to see a Giemsa-spattered existence on many a laboratory bench from Khartoum to Kathmandu.

Part 1 provides four chapters on organization and staffing, quality management, health and safety and equipping laboratories, before giving a chapter each on parasitological and clinical chemistry tests (microbiology, haematology and transfusion-related procedures appear in Part 2). Chapter 2, on total quality management (TQA), is a refreshing account of this area, written in an accessible style. The correct preparation of standard operating procedures, patient information management and financial accountability are all dealt with here, and there is the very useful section (Section 2.6), outlining the principles of the correct preparation of solutions and diagnostic stains, rightly seen by the author as a TQA issue. Also treated as a TQA issue is effective communication.

Chapter 4 is a catalogue of necessary and/or useful equipment for the district clinical laboratory: starting with the absolutely essential, and considering everything from the water supply to a voltage converter for use with car batteries to centrifuges to drying racks for laboratory glassware. Due consideration is given to the issue of power supplies and voltage protection devices; the choice, installation use and care of microscopes is well covered. Microscopy is considered by the author to account for 70–90% of the work in district laboratories and this whole chapter tends to focus either on microscopy per se, or on the peripheral activities, such as staining methods and sample preparation, which support it.

Microscopy remains the focus of Chapter 5 – Parasitological tests. The chapter is enhanced by good colour photographs, reproduced well. However, these tend to be of the near-perfect type one expects in a textbook. Here the dividing line between practical manual and textbook appears to be crossed – and I would have liked a few examples of poor parasite preparations, or photographs showing atypical morphologies. In the case of malaria diagnosis, the difficulty of distinguishing Plasmodium vivax from P. ovale is not covered in much detail. As these two species may occur together in east Africa as well as the south-west Pacific, and with P. knowlesi infections now being reliably reported from a number of countries in south-east Asia, a description of this parasite would have been warranted. However, these quibbles aside, this chapter will certainly be well-thumbed in our laboratory in London.

This book is a good investment for those in European academic institutions, at £50 (US$90). However, by purchasing the book at full price, you will be supporting the subsidized provision of the volume to developing country practitioners at a fraction of this price (£8.50) through Teaching Aids at Low Cost (TALC). This is an extremely useful service, which has previously benefited many African colleagues thereby making purchase of the first edition possible.