Who invented the hand sanitizer?
Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel in hospitals have to necessarily wash their hands with soap and water or with some antiseptic before entering a ward so that they don’t pass on infections to the patients.
The story goes, that in 1966, a student-nurse interning at a hospital in California in the US saw that it was often difficult for doctors rushing from one ward to another, to find a place where they could wash their hands. It occurred to the nurse that it would be a great boon to the doctors, if instead of washing hands, they could carry an antiseptic gel that they could rub between their palms.
The gel, of course, would have to contain a germicide. It was well-known that ethyl alcohol is a powerful germicide. Why not create a gel with an alcohol base? The nurse, it is obvious, had inventive skills. She created an alcohol-based gel and got doctors to try it.
Tests showed that it worked!
Doctors in that hospital and later, other hospitals began to use the gel instead of washing their hands. The nurse had invented a unique sanitizer. Later, in the 1980s, the gel began to be made commercially as a hand sanitizer, for home and personal use.
Who was the nurse? Her name is Lupe Hernandez. She made such a valuable contribution to health care services but she remains a shadowy figure in the annals of medical history.
