June 2008
Monthly Archive
School Dangers For Allergic Children
admin 29 Jun 2008 | : Children and Allergy
Allergy symptoms can vary very much, depending on the patient’s degree of sensitization to the specific allergens, or the the level of exposure. It is well known today, and it has been proved in the scientific world of allergology that an allergic person will become more and more sensitive if he is frequently getting in contact with the substances that trigger his immune system to have an allergic reaction.
The biggest perils are not in the grown-ups world, where people are conscious and don’t make stupid jokes, but in the children’s universe, in kindergardens, schools or playgrounds. A child who has a severe allergy to peanuts, let’s say, will develop a violent allergic reaction even if he is touched with peanut butter on the skin. There’s no need for him to actually swallow the food. In such cases, the simple contact with the peanut butter could trigger a violent reaction, which choking and suffocation due to swelling of the throat and airways walls, death occuring in an interval of minutes, if epinephrine is not administered immediately.
I’ve heard about a situation when a boy who was allergic to peanuts was threatened by his schoolmates that they’d put some on his skin. This is horrible, but diseases like allergy are beyond children’s power of understanding. The shock can be so severe that, even doctors, in controlled environments, don’t have the courage to perform prick tests on patients suspected to have an extremely weak immunity system. Such persons will be tested in other way: they will be taken a blood sample which will get analyzed in the laboratory (the so-called RAST and ELIZA tests). The method doesn’t give the results on the spot like the prick tests, but it is much safer for the patients.
Parents and educators together need to make sure that the youngsters understand that such ailments cannot be a target for jokes and play, because things may end up in a tragic way for all those involved. No matter how light the allergy symptoms may be, avoidance of the contact with the allergen is key to a happy life.