Alcoholic hand gel & health troubles: prisoners used it to get drunk, now children drink it!

Alcoholic hand gel ‘is being drunk by children’. • Hand hygiene – the latest new headlines! After 2009 reports about prisoners misusing alcoholic hand gel (they drank it to get drunk), recently the Irish National Poisons Information Centre (NPIC) made another report of worisome side-effects of alcoholic hand gel. It appears that a relatively high percentage of children got ingested after using alcoholic hand gel. John Herbert, NPIC spokesman, said that the organisation was concerned at the trend, which reflected the increasing availability of these products in hospitals, businesses and other healthcare institutions in 2009: “We saw a pretty steady increase in the number of calls around November last year. however, that since the spike in calls, numbers had dropped to eight in 2010 so far.” The NPIC received 54 enquiries and 74pc of these related to children. In 2008, there were just 20 calls from concerned doctors who were treating patients who had ingested alcohol hand gel! SUGGESTION FOR FURTHER READING: • Hand hygiene news: 2010-2008 headlines! • Hand Hygiene: warm air dryers increase bacteria on hands! • Swine flu prevention is a matter of ‘hand hygiene’! • Misleading hand gel sanitizers… waist of money?’