Comparing the effect of Antibacterial Gel and Soap on Maintaining Hand Hygiene in Military Personnel

Document Type : Original Research

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Abstract

Antibacterial gel was more effective than water and soap for hand hygiene maintaining, and in other hand gel didn’t need water and its usage was very easy for military personnel. So, in low hygiene areas, we recommend using antibacterial gel instead of soap for hand hygiene maintaining in military practices. The most common microorganism in either group before intervention was coagulase positive staphylococcous. Antibacterial gel reduced the colony count as 93.5% of coagulase positive staphylococcus, and 100% of all other bacteria (P < 0.001). Colony count of bacteriadid not reduce with soap significantly (p>0.25). This experimental study was conducted in two groups of 35 military personnel of the Ayatollah Kashani air force center in Kashan city with simple random sampling in 2006. Two samples were taken from hands 5 minutes before and after using soap or antibacterial gel. The sample was cultured in BA and EMB media, and then biochemical experiments were done. Effectiveness of two methods was compared statistically with Mc Nemar, chi-Square and t-test. P < 0.05 was considered as significantly different. Unavailability of healthy water in military practices can cause problems in hand hygine maintaining. This study compared the effecte of antibacterial gel and soap in hand hygine maintaining.

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Journal of Military Medicine
Volume 8, Issue 2 - Serial Number 24
July and August 2006
Pages 135-141

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