UW Medicine Makes Its Own Hand Sanitizer To Boost Hospital Supply

SEATTLE, WA — Pharmacists at the University of Washington Medical Center are using some basic ingredients to create and distribute hundreds of bottles of hand sanitizer for Seattle's health care workers.

UW Medicine said demand for hand sanitizer at hospitals has increased locally and in hospitals across the country amid the growing nationwide outbreak of the new coronavirus.

"We expected we would have a tighter supply, so we started making our own hand sanitizer here within the pharmacy department to distribute to all hospitals within UW Medicine," said Michael Alwan, the director of pharmacy. "We're prioritizing it for the patient care areas where any of the health care team coming in and out of a room needs to disinfect their hands."

"Toward the end of last week, we made [and] we shipped out about 100 bottles, and those are 500-milliliter bottles, and right now we're making about another 8 [or] 10 gallons," Alwan said.

The pharmacists at UW are following a simple recipe from the World Health Organization, which uses just three ingredients. UW said anyone can follow the same steps to make their own, as long as they can guarantee their ingredients come from a reputable source.