Bali turns to spirits for coronavirus protection: hand sanitiser produced from fermented palm wine
- The Indonesian holiday island faced a shortage of hand sanitiser, until Bali’s police chief had a clever idea
- Officers gathered a stockpile of the palm spirit arak, then staff at a university turned it into an alcohol-based hand wash
Pharmacists on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali are tackling a shortage of anti-coronavirus hand sanitiser by making their own tropical version – from thousands of litres of fermented palm wine.
The idea was the brainchild of Bali police chief Petrus Reinhard Golose, who says he was alarmed that supplies of alcohol-based disinfectant were in short supply while prices soared for what was left on the market.
He rustled up some 4,000 litres of the popular, potent spirit – known as arak – by asking local manufacturers to donate from their stocks, with the force also dipping into its own funds to buy up extra supplies.
Staff at Bali’s Udayana University were then tasked with turning the wine into a hand wash that could protect against the spread of coronavirus.
Within a week, they had managed to produce a disinfectant with a 96 per cent alcohol content to meet WHO standards, according to the university. Some clove and mint oil were added to the mixture to reduce hand irritation.