Equipment needed

Equipment needed The following equipment is needed for preparation of the stains: • A balance or weighting scale, sensitivity 0.1 gram • Measuring cylinders, one of 100 ml and one of 500 or 1000 ml • Conical flasks (big) or flat-bottomed balloon flasks • A spirit lamp for heating • Containers for the newly prepared stains. These can be well closing plastic bottles of 1 liter • Labels for the bottles • Brushes to clean the bottles before re-use • Big funnel for each solution to fill up the bottles • AFB-positive and negative unstained control smears. The positives are preferably low positive (1+); the negative can be made from the technologist’s own sputum or from white of egg. Do not use suspect sputa for the negative controls. Make as many slides as possible from the same low positive sputum, after letting it stand one day and mixing it carefully (container closed); check what the average number of AFB is by staining a few smears, write this in your notebook. Keep fixed unstained smears protected from dust and sunlight, best in a slide box