Anaphylaxis risk At least 40,000 people with food allergies cannot access specialist care in the Republic's public health system, it has been claimed.
Dr Jonathan Hourihane, a Trinity College Dublin graduate and consultant paediatric allergist at Southampton University Hospital said the level of service provision for people with allergy here was "as bad, if not worse", than that in Britain.
He was speaking following the publication of a report by the House of Commons Health Committee which accused the National Health Service (NHS) of failing millions of allergy sufferers in England and Wales.
Some 2 to 3 per cent of children under the age of five in the Republic are at risk of food allergy, Dr Hourihane said. When adults are included, 40,000 people here suffer with the condition, which, in extreme cases, can be fatal. The commonest foods that give rise to allergy are milk, eggs and peanuts.
Dr Hourihane, a world expert on nut allergy, told The Irish Times, "if 20,000 young people in Ireland had epilepsy or diabetes mellitus (and were not receiving treatment), there would be a tribunal of inquiry."
He said he was one of only six consultant paediatric allergists in the UK, with a population of 60 million people. This compares with a total of 20 paediatric allergy specialists in Finland, a ratio of 1 per 200,000. There are no consultant allergist posts in the public health system here.
According to the Commons all-party report, allergies affect 30 per cent of adults and 40 per cent of children. "The prevalence, severity and complexity of allergy in the population is rapidly rising," it states. One in 50 children are now allergic to nuts, a condition that can lead to anaphylaxis (a severe and sometimes fatal allergic reaction), it notes.
There had been a seven-fold increase in 10 years in the number of hospital admissions for anaphylactic shock, it points out.
"We found serious problems in the current provision of allergy services, which is manifestly inequitable," the report adds.
Referring to the recent increase in allergic disease Dr Hourihane said it was not confined to food allergy. "Eighty per cent of children with asthma have allergic asthma. It has been shown that you can reduce the number of emergency asthma attendances by 50 per cent if the allergic component of the disease is properly addressed."
Asked what it would mean for patients if an adequate service in the public health sector was put in place, Dr Hourihane said: "People with allergies have to live with worry and uncertainty. Parents of children with food allergy are concerned about the possibility of their immediate death from anaphylaxis. There needs to be a whole stratum of care put in place to address the problem."
Dr Joe Fitzgibbon, a specialist in clinical allergy at the Galway Clinic told The Irish Times that at present there was a limited service for private allergy patients in the Republic. "I find it hard to cope with the private workload outside of any public demand there might be," he said.
Dr Hourihane will address a series of meetings for health professionals in Galway, Cork and Dublin this week.