ePetition to improve frontline care for those suffering from reflux and allergies

Readers of this Blog old and new will know only too well how poor the diagnosis and care of children with food allergy often is. We lag well behind other Western countries in our diagnosis and care of those suffering from allergies, and this is particularly shocking when you learn that the UK has the highest incidence of allergy in the world. Yes - in the WORLD.

Our rates of allergy - reported AND diagnosed/confirmed are soaring, particularly the rate of non IgE allergy. In babies and young children this often manifests as allergic gut with symptoms such as reflux and or motility problems. In the nearly seventeen years since I have been a parent of a child with such health problems there has been frighteningly little progress. 

(I have written about my reasons for setting this Blog up here. )

And what is MORE alarming is that when under-informed front line health professional blame the parents - or more often the mother. It is three and a half years since NICE published their extensive guidelines for Diagnosing and Treating Babies and Children with Allergy - and they clearly set out likely non IgE allergy symptoms - and contrast these with intolerances which are very different. Yet STILL our NHS is stuck in the Dark Ages and resources are misdirected.

 If you want to clue yourself up about the differences read this.

My children have multiple consultants when one Paediatric Allergist would most likely replace almost all of them. But the system prefers to crisis mange symptoms depending on their location in the body, rather than the underlying cause. Small wonder there is little funding left! 

Too many times I hear of families who are wrongly informed by so called professionals that their child cannot have a food allergy because skin prick tests are negative - this is incorrect, and yet it persists. 

Last Autumn I attended the All Party Group for Allergy at Westminster and heard more depressing statistics and how very far we have to go. But to my mind THE most important thing is that front line health professionals - Health Visitors, GPs etc have at least READ what is NOT new information. Is that really too much to ask??

Please, please sign this petition to help, too many mothers are blamed for symptoms their babies suffer because those they seek to ask for help fail them.