The product has been developed in line with recommendations of World Health Organisation, Centre for Disease Control and Prevention
In an endeavour to minimise the transmission risk of Covid-19 and promote basic hygiene, two students of IIT Roorkee have led a development of preparing more than 150 litres (~ 1500 bottles) of the herbal hand sanitiser. The hand sanitiser will be distributed free of cost by Heal-agnostics Innovations, a start-up incubated at TIDES, IIT Roorkee under the aegis of Dr Indranil Lahiri and Dr Debrupa Lahiri, with support of the administration.
An initiative of Siddharth Sharma, research scholar of Centre of Nanotechnology, IIT Roorkee (Co-Founder, Heal-agnostic Innovations) and Vaibhav Jain, research scholar of the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, it is made of 80 per cent isopropanol/ ethanol and comprises of antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory herbal ingredients; it also works as an excellent moisturiser.
The product has been developed in line with recommendations of the World Health Organisation and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It will be distributed free of cost at the IIT Roorkee campus.
“In view of the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic, it is imperative to maintain basic hygiene practices since there is no specific treatment or vaccine for the disease. This IIT Roorkee-incubated product will be useful to the entire community by promoting basic hygiene,” said Sharma.
“This huge task would not have been possible without the hardwork of some students. Satish Jaiswal, Kanike Rajesh, Dibyanshu Lahiri, Anshu Dubey, Souvik Ghosh, Nitam Kumar, Vishal Panwar have worked day and night for three days continuously to make our effort successful,” mentioned Dr Lahiri.
The sanitiser bottles are being handed over to the office of Dean SRIC, which is working as a nodal centre for distribution among the campus community. IIT Roorkee is also planning to put up a refilling station at a suitable location in the campus. Heal-agnostic Innovations is working to support this plan.