Abstract

The World Health Organization recommends the use of ethyl alcohol or isopropyl alcoholbased hand sanitizers to control the spread of the COVID 19 pandemic. As a result, a number of temporary guidelines and policies are being claimed among different countries of the world by waiving restrictions on the production of hand sanitizers which allow manufacturers, including alcohol beverage manufacturers, to produce alcohol based hand sanitizers in midst of COVID-19 pandemic. Under such circumstances there will be a high chance of producing substandard and counterfeit alcohol based sanitizers by unscrupulous firms. In addition, the fragile regulatory authority coupled with risk of using poor quality sanitizers highly requires the active preparedness of regulatory authorities in resource limited setting, including Ethiopia. Therefore, the current commentary highly recommends the regulatory authority of Ethiopia to actively counterpart the spread of poor quality sanitizers. Moreover, assessment of the quality of alcohol based hand sanitizer circulating in Ethiopia, low income country should be undertaken as soon as possible to assure its quality.

Keywords

COVID 19, alcohol-based sanitizers, World Health Organization (WHO), guidelines, policies