EVALUATION OF ANTIBACTERIAL EFFICACY OF PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE HAND SANITIZERS FOR GENERAL PUBLIC IN ISLAMABAD

Abstract

Hand washing is recognized as a key element to prevent the spread of infectious disease. Hand sanitation is the act of cleansing hands with sanitizers to ensure proper hand hygiene. Keeping in view, we conducted the study to evaluate the antimicrobial efficacy of sanitizers available for public at twenty different locations in Islamabad. These locations included places like (ATMs, restaurants, labs etc.) These 20 samples were applied on the hands of 40 different people with two different approaches and got disappointing results both ways. The petri dishes showed almost same amount of bacterial activity before sanitizing and after sanitizing. The research lime lights the authenticity of the publically available hand sanitizers; whether they are efficient or not to the extent that they could be relied upon so effortlessly, whether or not the people governing the public places are being responsible with the check and balance of these sanitizers, all of these ingenious ways given to the public to keep their health and hygienic safety intact in these tough times of the pandemic just so that the social fear of going out can be adjusted to the new normal which is the excessive care of health and hygiene to lower the chances of the spread of Covid. The research study also removes the redundancies that cloud the judgements of a common man on the “do’s and do not” on how to make the interactions and work in the public places safe along with a concluded discussion on the results that were taken from the experimentations.