By Francis H. Murray
The College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS) has launched a locally made hand sanitizer as part of efforts to stop the transmission of Covid-19.
Authorities say that the initiative was part of their commitment in the fight against the Pandemic.
The product was developed by a cross section of final year students at the Pharmacology Department of the college, through the supervision of the Pharmacy Board of Sierra Leone.
The sanitizer is made up of 80% of ethanol, 1.45% of glycerol, 0.1255% of hydrogen peroxide and a volume of water as required, providing antiseptic effect against microbes.
Hand sanitizers have been scarce, thanks to high demand in light of the epidemic. The available ones are also extremely expensive in the country.
In his background of the project, Foday Turay, President of NAPS, said that the project was born out of the need to help the government in the fight to prevent the virus from making its way into the country prior to the country’s index case.
‘’When Covid 19 was all over the place and before coming to Sierra Leone, there was a provocative thought of what can we do as Pharmacy students. And then when Covid 19 came, we learnt that hand sanitizers skyrocketed from Le5, 000, Le7, 000, people started to sell sanitizers at Le50, 000 and Le70, 00, and we thought it fit that now we can also do this within the country. We can help the country in the fight against Covid-19 by producing alcohol based sanitizer and even the jell-like sanitizer. We can do this because it’s part of our training, this is why we’re trained to become pharmacists in the future,’’ Turay narrated.
The Deputy Vice Chancellor of the college, Prof Mohamed Samai, lauded the venture of the students and called on the government and its partners to provide more resources geared towards capacitating the college in order to conform to international best practices.
‘‘It’s unfortunate that as a college we don’t have the infrastructure, whiles other colleges have been built, renovated and re-renovated, nothing has been done for us College of Medicine, even the structure that we are in today was really built out of one of the projects we were involved in as a College. But unfortunately the government has not really committed any resources to developing the infrastructure of the college,’’ Prof Samai said.
He added that the College had all the requisite intellectual capacity needed to identify the public’s needs and proffer lasting solutions thereby reducing the high export rate of basic medical equipment.
‘‘If we have the right infrastructure within the college in terms of lab and the basic equipment, things like I .V fluids, these are not things that are very sophisticated to produce, these are things that we can produce. The government is spending millions of dollars in the importation of things like I.V fluids and water for injection. These are very simple things that we can produce as a college if we have the right infrastructure,’’ the Samai said.
Dean of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at COMAHS, Dr. Mohamed Bawoh, expressed appreciation to the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF) for making available their “well-equipped” laboratory to the student researchers. He also called on the University to invest in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences laboratory so that mass production of other quality materials in the country could be possible.
‘‘This is not the end of it. We’re determined as a Faculty, as a College and as a university to sustain the production of this product. We only need support from the university,” he said, adding: “we may not continue to be using their lab, so my cry now is for the University to invest in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences Laboratory so that we may have larger production of not only hand sanitizer but some other products in country.”
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