Science and Health

Food allergy becomes epidemic for Aussie children

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-03-09 15:18

SYDNEY - A leading health expert revealed on Tuesday that childhood allergy rates have hit "epidemic proportions" in Australia.

Canberra-based allergy expert Dr Ray Mullins said 15,000 Australian children born this year would develop a potentially fatal food allergy before they reached school age.

Food allergies, particularly allergies to peanuts and tree nuts, were a growing problem with no known cause, and they now affected 3-6 percent of children under the age of three.

"This translates to 65,000 little kids with food allergy before they reach school age, (including) 25,000 now with peanut or tree nut allergies," Mullins told Australian Associated Press.

"On current birth rates, another 15,000 kids born every year will develop food allergy in the first few years of life.

"It's a public health problem of epidemic proportions."

Mullins, President of the Australian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA), cited a Western Australia-based study which found about 80 percent of schools had at least one student at risk of a severe allergic reaction to food.

One in seven of the schools reported a student had suffered an anaphylactic reaction - requiring in emergency injection with adrenaline - in the past 12 months.