The allergy timebomb

More and more youngsters are suffering extreme allergic reactions to everyday foods. What can be done to help the families living with constant terror?

- Bee Wilson

• 30 The average time in minutes between consuming a food and cardiorespiratory arrest
• 0.2% The proportion of those in the UK admitted to hospital with food anaphylaxis who died in 2018 – down from 0.7% in 1998. But hospital admissions for food anaphylaxis have increased in the same period
• 3 The number of different adrenaline pens to treat anaphylaxis prescribed to UK children – each of which has slightly different instructions
• £4m The potential cost saving ($5.2m) to the NHS if schools were supplied directly with standardised adrenaline pens

When five-year-old Benedict Blythe woke up on the morning of 1 December 2021, he was excited that Christmas was coming. He came downstairs to open the first box in his Advent calendar containing a plastic springy frog and dairy-free white chocolate (Benedict was allergic to milk, along with many other foods including soy, sesame, eggs and nuts). It was Benedict’s first term at school – Barnack primary in Stamford – and he loved it so much that back in September, he had cried when he learned that there were no classes at the weekend. That morning, he went off cheerfully to school with a small packet of dairy-free McVitie’s Gingerbread Men for snack time. He seemed happy and healthy when he arrived but by the afternoon, he was dead, having collapsed with anaphylaxis.