Food Allergy Canada calls for laws requiring schools to stock epinephrine devices

TORONTO — Last May, six-year-old Kofi Berkley started getting itchy and developing bumps on his skin while he was playing with his friends at recess. The recess supervisor brought the Grade 1 student, who didn’t have any known allergies, to his Edmonton elementary school’s office. Principal Joanne Harle and an administrative assistant applied ice on his skin to try to soothe the irritation.

“Truly to goodness within — it felt like an hour but it wasn’t, it was probably maybe a minute — you could see his eyes swell. He was gasping to breathe,” said Harle. “That’s when we, the admin assistant said, ‘I think we have an allergic reaction.

We need the EpiPen.'” They had two EpiPens on hand at George P. Nicholson School because of an Alberta law enacted in 2020 that requires schools to have “stock” epinephrine devices, in addition to the EpiPens that parents provide for their kids with known food, bee or wasp allergies. Food Allergy Canada says although other provincial education ministries have policies in place to prepare for and deal with serious allergic reactions, Alberta is the only one that legislates all schools to stock epinephrine devices that aren’t designated for a particular student.

The advocacy group is calling for all provinces to put similar legislation in place, rather than leaving it up to individual schools and school boards to take that initiative. “Stock epinephrine, the way to think about that, is it’s like a defibrillator. It’s there for emergencies in an individual where you didn’t actually expect that to happen,” said Jennifer Gerdts, executive director of Food Allergy Canada.

suggests that 25 per cent of anaphylaxis cases that happen at school are among students who didn’t have a known history of severe allergy, Gerdts said — and there’s no reason to believe that prevalence would be any different in Canada. Alberta’s legislation also requires teachers and other school staff to do Food Allergy Canada’s “Allergy Aware” online training module, which takes about 30 minutes to complete. Kofi’s dad, Cristen Berkley, said an allergy clinic still hasn’t been able to figure out exactly what his son is allergic to, but they’ll keep trying.

“It wasn’t easy to let him go back to school, especially not knowing what exactly triggered the allergy,” Berkley said. “Knowing that the teachers were prepared in case of a…