Does Hand Sanitizer Work?

A common item brought and bought on board a cruise ship is gel hand sanitizer. It brings up the question of how affective it is when on a cruise. The answer is it depends on what you are trying to avoid. Alcohol based sanitizers work great (up to 99% effective) on bacteria. The problem is that the big culprit, norovirus, is a virus. Its not to say that you should not take hand sanitizer with you on vacation. Its great to have every protection you can think of however when it comes to virus protection, the best thing to do is to wash your hands with soap and and hot water often and especially before eating. Another thing to do is to keep your hands away from your face as much as possible. It sounds easy, but keep tract of how often your hands come close to your face in a day and you may be surprised how often you unconsciously do so. We take hand sanitizer with us on vacation because when in port there are times that finding a place to wash ones hands and any protection is better than none.