Hospital-treated and fatal adverse food reactions in Victoria, 2011/12 to 2020/21 (Hazard Edition 91)

This edition of Hazard focused on adverse food reactions in Victoria. Adverse food reactions are common in Australia. A 2015 study reported a 9% prevalence of egg allergy in one year-olds and a 5% prevalence of multiple food allergy, based upon a population-based cohort study of infants in Melbourne, Australia (Peters et al., 2015). Between 1997 and 2013, food anaphylaxis deaths as well as food anaphylaxis hospital admission rates increased by 10% per year in Australia (Mullins et al., 2016). Due to the high prevalence as well as rapid increase in allergies in the population, a comprehensive, current overview of food allergy in Victoria was considered timely. Research at the Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit is focused on injury. Food reactions and anaphylaxis are in the ICD-10-AM Chapter 19 on Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes. Adverse food reactions therefore contribute to overall estimates of burden of injury, and given the scale of this issue, a more in-depth evaluation was warranted.

The aim of this edition of Hazard is to provide an in-depth epidemiological overview of food allergies resulting in hospital treatment or death in Victoria, including frequencies, rates and trends. Time trends in the ten-year period from 2011/12 to 2020/21 are presented, as well as an in-depth analysis of hospital-treated food allergies in the three-year period from 2018/19 to 2020/21.

The data sources for this report were: Emergency Department presentations recorded in the Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD), hospital admissions recorded in the Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (VAED), and deaths recorded in the Cause of Death Unit Record Dataset (COD). Population data were sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).