For quantification of hemoglobin (Hb) fractions, most importantly HbA2 and to a lesser extent variant Hbs, the International Council for Standardization of Haematology recommends high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE), capillary isoelectric focusing, electrophoresis followed by elution or microcolumn chromatography [1]. However, in rela- tively less affluent countries, including India, several laboratories continue to use the inexpensive and technically simple cellulose acetate electrophoresis (CAE) followed by photo-densitometric (and not elution-based) quantitation of Hb fractions [2–4]. This is explicitly not recommended by learned societies and guidelines due its reported high coefficient of variation (up to 20%) [1, 5]. We provide com- parative data on values derived from both techniques.