As P.E.I.'s new allergy doctor eases access to care, national group says more services needed

Now that Prince Edward Island has a doctor who specializes in diagnosing and treating allergies, life has gotten less stressed for parents like Stephanie Keith. 

Keith's son Sawyer is allergic to milk products, nuts and eggs. She found out after visiting a travelling allergist who would visit Island patients a few times a year.

With that diagnosis made, she then had to travel to Halifax with her toddler every two to three weeks to get the care her son needed.

Now the Island has its own doctor specializing in allergies and clinical immunology, Dr. Hannah Roberts.

"It has just been so convenient ... She is a wealth of knowledge," Keith said of the Charlottetown-based physician.

"I've heard of so many other families on the Island that have either started to have appointments with her, or they were going to Halifax and can now go to visit her on the Island."

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Keith said Roberts has helped with aspects of her son's care she didn't feel comfortable managing on her own — like gradually introducing problem foods in small quantities.

"So for example, milk. You can bake it into things… and it's called the ladder, so you're climbing up the ladder to see how much they can take before having an allergic reaction," she said.

"This can be really frightening to do at home... I don't really want to do something like that in case he were to have an anaphylactic reaction." 

Now, she said, "you can go to her office, she has everything there, they're watched very closely." 

Still a problem on P.E.I.

Though Islanders with allergies now have more access to care, Jennifer Gerdts, the executive director of Food Allergy Canada, said there's still room for expansion so that Roberts isn't on her own.  

"It's my understanding that that's a very busy practice and there are still wait times. That really is a function of what exists across Canada," Gerdts said. "Prince Edward Island still fits into that, [although] progress was made."

Allergies don't just affect infants and young children, of course. Gerdts said the kind of access they have is "exponential in terms of the access challenge that adults face, so we got some work to do."

Food Allergy Canada has long lobbied provincial governments to improve access to allergy treatments, and that doesn't just mean doctor numbers, Gerdts said.  

"It's not possible in any kind of specialty to say, 'OK, we're going to double the number of allergists.' So I do think we need to challenge the system to be providing innovative solutions," she said.

She speculated that might entail "the specialists handling the complicated cases, and having others in the health-care system supported to handle the… less complicated, more straightforward cases."