The anaphylaxis fear that no parent wants to talk about out loud

So today I just wanted to talk about the numbers around that because the reality is that anaphylaxis, um, leading to a fatal outcome is actually super, super rare in a young child, like a primary school-aged child.

So, so much so that there isn't actually really any numbers around it in Australia or the UK, um, in the last year or so.

So there's a couple of reasons for this, but yes, there is deaths due to anaphylaxis, um, but normally it's with adults.

So there's around about 20 deaths a year in Australia, but all of them in the last year or two are made up from older teenagers or adults.

Now, there's a couple of reasons for this, or there's a couple of theories for this.

Number one is that a child's immu- a, a child's cardiovascular system actually deals with a blood pressure drop much better than an adult system.

So I've always said children are very resilient.

Children are way stronger than they appear.

And things like, look at COVID for instance, you know, the virus, um, of COVID just did not affect children the way that people thought it might, um, because they're just, they're just, they're built, their literally bodies are built differently, okay? The immune system's still developing.

There's lots of differences, but just one of the theories is that the cardiovascular system just, it just reboots and, um, recovers quicker, therefore, a blood pressure drop isn't something that is going to be fatal.

Now, no one really talks about numbers and I f- so I feel like the anxiety of anaphylaxis is hanging over the head all the time.

And so I just, my hope is with this reel is that the anxiety can be dampened down a little bit knowing that yes, your child might have a severe allergic reaction and they might look really, really sick and they might be absolutely covered head to toe in hives, but in reality, the, the outcome of an anaphylaxis in a school-aged child being fatal is so rare.

So I hope that this lands, um, in being reassuring rather than scary because I feel like the, the constant hum of anxiety hanging over allergy families and the mental load of that can absolutely drive you to distraction and in reality, the, the numbers are very, very low of that.