Effectiveness of Hand Gel/Sanitiser

Hi All

Following on from the digression started on the halal/alcohol gel thread- I thought it would this might deserve a thread in its own right?

I have come across a couple of 99.999% claims recently ( 1 attached)- which apparently includes effectiveness against c. diff and norovirus- as usual though the research was carried out 'in vitro'- not on hands!- IMO this makes a big difference!

(I inhabited a research lab for a number of years- and given time and the correct resources we could pretty much come up with some results to support any theory- but with a real workplace, a couple of hundred staff and some swabs there's nowhere to hide!)

I was just wondering if anyone had personal experience of- or has come across any 'hands on' (sorry!!) research?

Attached is one of the documents I've found so far- I would welcome any information you have

Thanks in advance

Mike

Interesting post about alcohol gel.
In my experience, if your hands have any kind of residue, gel only gives you wormlike debris that you have to get rid of. So, do you wipe it off? Where is this debris going to fall? So I´m all for handwashing, even if you leave out the alcohol gel after that.
Quite a while ago, we had some studies involving handswabbing before and after washing. I work in a flour mill. It seems that flour gives you a sort of glovelike coating, so that, if you don´t wash your hands correctly, and they were not clean before you started working, you get higher microbial counts after handwashing.
So in vitro, you can have any kinds of results, but in practice I think a good handwashing technique is better than gloves and alcohol gel.