Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is diagnosed by the microbiological Nugent scoring method or clinical Amsel’s criteria. Assessment of 404 vaginal samples (293 women) identified 110 (27.2%), 108 (26.7%) and 161 (39.9%) samples to be BV-positive using Nugent’s method, standard Amsel’s criteria and simplified Amsel’s criteria respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, and kappa statistic (κ) for standard and simplified Amsel’s criteria were 71.8% (95% CI = 62.4–80.0), 90.1% (95% CI = 62.4–86.1), 0.62 (95% CI = 0.53–0.72) and 88.2% (95% CI = 80.6–93.6), 78.2% (95% CI = 73.1–82.8), 0.58 (95% CI = 0.49–0.67), respectively. A combination of vaginal pH and clue cells exhibited the highest concordance (κ = 0.64, 95% CI = 0.54–0.74) with Nugent’s method and may be used for simplified BV diagnosis.