Evaluation of Fungicidal Activity of Herbal Hand Sanitizer

Background: Keeping hands clean is one of the safest ways to control the transmittance of germs and microbes that can cause several types of diseases. Hand sanitizers are effective cleansing agents that provide alternate and effective means to maintain hand hygiene and are considered as better choices over hand washing agents due to the ease and convenience they offer. In this regard, apart from keeping the hands free from germs herbal ingredient based hand-sanitizers also provide added advantage of keeping the skin nourished and moisturised. Aim: The primary objective of the current study was evaluating the fungicidal activities of an herbal based hand sanitizer - Clean Hand Gel, a combination containing extracts of herbs, by time kill assay. Materials & Methods: Standard operating procedures prepared based on European standard guidelines for evaluation of antimicrobial efficacy (EN 1276 and EN 1650) was used in the present study on the species C. albicans and A. niger. Results: The study material at a concentration of 20% when tested for 120 seconds of contact time against specified fungi resulted in logarithmic reduction of 0.629 and 0.108 in the viable counts of C. albicans and A. niger, respectively. Conclusion: The present study concluded that Clean Hand Gel possessed fungicidal effects on the specified fungi, C. albicans and A. niger, and there is potential for it to be used as an effective herbal hand sanitizer in preventing the spread of microbes (specified fungi) from hand to hand and thus can be implicated in controlling the transmission of related communicable diseases.