Pharmacy academics from Keele University are putting their expertise into practice to make hand sanitiser to help protect key workers amid the coronavirus outbreak.

As the world tackles the spread of the novel coronavirus, the importance of good hand hygiene has been repeatedly emphasised by healthcare professionals and governments around the world, leading to a shortage of hand sanitiser products as their usage increases.

But in a bid to help the local Royal Stoke Hospital, academics and technicians from Keele’s School of Pharmacy and Bioengineering, and the Central Science Laboratory, have offered their expertise and the University’s laboratories to produce more hand sanitiser to help curb the spread of the virus.

Using a World Health Organisation (WHO) approved formula, the team will produce hand sanitiser to support the needs of the local University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust. Their aim is to provide as much hand sanitiser as they are able to for the duration of the pandemic, based on the amount of raw ingredients available.

Head of the School of Pharmacy and Bioengineering, Dr Katie Maddock, said: “We are delighted to be able to support the local health economy in a very practical way during the Covid-19 pandemic. Pharmacists are perfectly placed to deliver this service as they are not only experts in healthcare, but experts in formulation science.”

This is another example of Keele’s commitment to aiding in the national effort to tackle coronavirus, which has also seen Personal Protective Equipment donated to local healthcare workers, and more than 200 medical and nursing students volunteering to join the frontline NHS response.