ISSN 2582-788X RESEARCH ARTICLE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES Page | 53 EFFECTIVENESS OF MICROBAT (STERIGARD) HAND RUB AND MICROGUARD (STERIGARD) HAND DISINFECTANT FROM IMAGO & GETTER FOR REDUCTION OF INFECTION IN ANY FACILITY Imran Memon*, Tahur Shaikh, Idris Khan, Surjeet Samanta, Romil Dagha and Komal Kumari Imago & Getter, Technical Team, Mumbai, India ____________________________________________________ ABSTRACT The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and other health experts promote hand hygiene as the most important hygiene measure in preventing the spread of infection from any facility. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are widely used for achieving hand hygiene. The use of hand sanitizer and disinfects result sustained improvement in hand-hygiene compliance, coinciding with a reduction of many resistant and prone infections. The study aimed at determining the efficacy of Microbat (Sterigard) hand rub and Microguard (Sterigard) Hand disinfectant by ASTM E2755 method which included 6 different volunteers for the test procedure. The results showed more than log 4 reduction for bacteria, yeast and molds. This proves the efficacy of both Microbat (Sterigard) hand rub and Microguard (Sterigard) Hand disinfection and should be considered for regular usage for achieving aseptic environment. Keywords: Hand Hygiene, Alcohol-based hand sanitizer, Infection control, Aseptic environment _____________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION As globally said “A Clean Hand is a Caring Hand”, Hands are considered to be the primary source of transmitting microbes and causing infections to individuals in any facility [1]. Diseases which are easily transferred such as communicable diseases can be prevented by maintaining personal as well as hand hygiene. It is very well known that hand hygiene is crucial to prevent and minimize infections especially in healthcare facility [2]. For maintaining hand hygiene, hand sanitizers like, alcohol hand sanitizers are increasingly being used as disinfectants over hand washing with soap and water, due to better efficacy [3]. Hand sanitizers significantly increase the chance of maintaining the hands clean and aseptic which helps in reducing the infection risk. Hand sanitizers are very effective in reducing households illnesses [4] skin infections respiratory and tract infections [5] in preventing microbial environment from elementary schools,[6] and in university conference halls/dormitories[7], reduce microbial load in