By Zodidi Dano 
7h ago
CAPE TOWN – The Rwandan Food and Drug Authority (FDA) has recalled all BEU hand sanitisers manufactured by local company Holy Trust owing to matters of quality.
On Wednesday, FDA director-general Dr Charles Karangwa issued a notice calling for the immediate suspension of the products.
“Reference made to laboratory-controlled tests which revealed that the aforementioned hand sanitiser failed to meet quality specifications. Therefore, in the interest of protecting public health, Rwanda FDA hereby orders the recall of the hand sanitiser Batch No. 090208032022, manufactured 08/03/2020, with expiry date 07/03/2022,” the FDA stated.
The FDA said it had also temporarily suspended the manufacturing plant. It urged consumers to return the hand sanitisers to the supplier and encouraged them to read product labels to determine their quality prior to purchase.
Hand sanitisers are in high demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Washing hands with soap or using hand sanitiser has been recommended by medical experts as one of the key ways of preventing infection.
Covid-19 is a dangerous respiratory illness similar to the flu. It is spread when one comes into contact with an infected person who coughs or sneezes near you. It can also linger on surfaces for a number of hours and be transmitted when another person touches that surface.
In Rwanda alone the coronavirus has infected 75 people, while globally the number of infected people has surpassed 800,000 and more than 40,000 have died of Covid-19.
Governments in countries such as Kenya have enlisted the help of oil companies to produce hand sanitisers using impounded ethanol. The sanitisers are then distributed among communities.