The government is facing fresh calls to appoint an “Allergy Tsar” following a recent fatality when a 13-year-old girl died of a severe allergic reaction just hours after taking one sip of a Costa Coffee hot chocolate.
Hannah Jacobs suffered a severe dairy allergy and had an immediate reaction while out with her mother in Barking, east London, in February 2023 after drinking the beverage, which should have been made with soya milk.
An inquest found that there was a “failure to follow processes”, and a “failure of communication” which led to Hannahs death.
The court heard written evidence from Costa employees, one of whom said they had failed the quiz 20 times before passing.
Another said their husband had accompanied them to work on their first day to help translate for them, and that they used Google Translate to help them when reading English.
In a statement issued by the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, Hannah’s parents called for the government to bring in an “allergy tsar”.
Following the inquest, Hannah’s mother, Abimbola Duyile, paid tribute to her daughter who had “everything to live for”.
A member of Ms Duyile’s legal team read a statement outside East London coroner’s court on her behalf, saying: “Having heard all the evidence over the last week, it is clear to me that although the food service industry and medical professionals are required to have allergy training, the training is really not taken seriously enough.
“Better awareness is really needed in these industries and across society of the symptoms of anaphylaxis. Allowing people who serve food and drinks to retake an allergy training test 20 times is not acceptable.”
Nadim and Tanya Ednan-Laperouse, whose 15-year-old daughter died aged 15 in 2016 after an allergic reaction to a Pret A Manger baguette bought at Heathrow airport, said says they were told by the Government that they were ‘too busy at the moment’ to appoint an allergy tsar,
The Ednan-Laperouses said: “It has been heartbreaking to hear over the course of the last few days the catalogue of errors and missed opportunities which resulted in the death of schoolgirl Hannah Jacobs from a food allergy.
“This is yet another death from food allergy that should never have happened.”
They have joined with Hannah’s mother Abi to call for the government to appoint an Allergy Tsar to act as a “national champion” for the one in three people who live with food allergies.
According to research by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) around 6% of adults in the UK, equivalent to 2.4m people are estimated to have a food allergy. Since 2012, there has been a 615% increase in hospital admissions for anaphylaxis, a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction.
