Feedmeallergyfree

There was an interesting article in The Observer at the weekend titled “NHS swamped by an epidemic of allergies”.

According to the article “The NHS is failing to keep up with the growing number of allergy sufferers, with new figures today showing that only a handful of specialist doctors across the country are running clinics for them.

One in three people in Britain can expect to suffer from some form of allergy during their lifetime – including 2 million people in the UK thought to have some allergy to food – but there has been barely any increase in NHS services to cope with this. Experts will warn this week that demand for care is outstripping the NHS’s ability to cope, and many patients go to private clinics or dietitians that may offer unconventional diets.”

“Britain has one of the highest rates of allergy in the world, along with America, Australia and New Zealand. For reasons not understood, in the last 20 years the rate of eczema and asthma has at least doubled, and there has been at least a threefold increase in nut allergies. Before the mid-Nineties nut allergies were rare, but one in 50 schoolchildren now has one.

Dr Gideon Lack, who runs allergy services at the Guy’s and St Thomas’s Trust in London, said: ‘Demand is continuing to grow, but it’s not matched by the levels of services.’ There is also evidence that severe reactions are becoming more widespread. Prescriptions for EpiPens – devices that shoot adrenaline into a patient going into anaphylactic shock – have risen from 45,000 in 1998 to 153,000 in 2005.”