A study has been conducted to look into the health management plans for children in Chicago schools who are asthmatic and those with known food allergies. The alarming discovery is that most schools do not profile these health issues among their students such that they do not have health management forms on file.
Health forms are crucial to rendering the so-called 504 plan to children who experience allergy attacks or asthma attacks at school. The absence of a health form along which often spirals down to the mismanagement of a child under an asthma attack or an acute allergy attack can lead to complications and even death.
Dr. Ruchi Gupta a world-renowned asthma and food allergy researcher who works with the Center for Community Health at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago says that "many kids especially from low-income or minority families, are not found in their schools, health management systems."
This discovery is so alarming due to the fact that Gupta and her colleagues found out that out of 400,000 3-18 year old kids in Chicago, 4,250 has food allergies while another 18,287 are asthmatic.
Also, out of their research, Gupta's team found out that in schools around Chicago only 25% of the total population of asthmatic kids and those with food allergies are filed in their school system.
While calling 911 is a must whenever an attack strikes, it should not be the only option for the remaining 75% of school children who, at any time sooner or later, will have an attack.
According to Lung.org, an online lung cancer education resource, asthma is one of the chronic respiratory pathologies in childhood. In America alone, about 7.1 million children under 18 years of age suffered an asthma attack or an episode since 2011.
Food allergies in children, on the other hand, continually raises alarm, especially that with a child attacks are often unmonitored. The most alarming thing about this, not only with kids but in adults as well, is that the first or the next attack can lead to the life-threatening anaphylaxis - an article on FoodAllergy.org states.