Childhood allergy rates have hit “epidemic proportions” in Australia, prompting health experts to broaden their efforts to combat the mysterious condition.

Canberra-based allergy expert Dr Ray Mullins said 15,000 Australian children born this year would develop a potentially fatal food allergy before they reached school age.

Food allergies - particularly allergies to peanuts and tree nuts - were a growing problem with no known cause, and they now affected three to six per cent of children under the age of three.

“This translates to 65,000 little kids with food allergy before they reach school age, (including) 25,000 now with peanut or tree nut allergies”, Dr Mullins said today.

“On current birth rates, another 15,000 kids born every year will develop food allergy in the first few years of life.

“It’s a public health problem of epidemic proportions.”

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WATERLOO - Ensuring impoverished African villagers have easy access to clean water may seem like an impossible task for a group of Iowa high school kids.But Columbus High School students are walking Saturday to raise funds and help make that possible for three communities in north central Kenya. The Walk for Water will be held at Hawkeye Community College beginning at 9:30 a.m. The public is invited to donate to the cause or collect pledges and join students in the five-kilometer (or 3.1 mile) walk around the college’s interior courtyard.

Columbus’ service club organized the event after the school was among 30 chosen for the fund-raising effort benefiting Kenyan and Ugandan water projects by Canadian nonprofit Impossible 2 Possible. Senior Grace Moore, the club’s president, said they decided on the event because “the women and children would have to walk to get their water.” Campus minister Mary Pedersen added, “The average is at least three miles to get their water.”

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Chicken or beef? What about fish, vegetarian or a jacket potato? A new scheme is helping prevent disappointment for primary school pupils at lunchtime.

With three choices a day for school dinners, sometimes a child will end up disappointed when their favourite runs out before they get to the counter. But a new scheme being piloted at around 40 schools in the county is changing that.

Schools taking part in the scheme include: · Barnwood C of E Primary · Berkeley · Blakeney · Cashes Green, Stroud · Castle Hill, Brockworth.

· Chesterton, Cirencester · Dursley C of E Primary · Forest View, Cinderford Children choose their food when they arrive at school in the morning and are given a coloured wristband corresponding to a particular dish. They then redeem the wristbands at lunchtime for the right meals – making for happier children and easier meal planning for caterers.

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By Alix Roy, Town Correspondent

Middle school students at the Salemwood School are wearing their support for Haiti on their wrists and are close to raising $1,000 to help earthquake victims.

A project dreamed up by sixth grade teachers to sell rubber bracelets imprinted with the words hope, strength, survivor, and faith, has taken off. Students received permission to sell the bracelets, which come in blue and red, the colors of Haiti’s flag, during lunch.

There is no minimum donation required to receive a bracelet but many students have been generous in their offerings, sixth grader Caron Camille said on Thursday.

“It started with dimes and quarters and the next thing you know we’re getting 20s,” she said. Camille grew up in Haiti and saw her former schools and neighborhood reduced to rubble during television coverage of the disaster. “I was crying ever day,” she said.

The bracelet sale raised nearly $1,000 for the American Red Cross in its first week, said sixth grade English teacher Jane Wright. Of the 500 bracelets purchased for the drive, only 20 remain.

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The earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan. 12 has left its people and infrastructure in ruins. Watching rescue workers and Haitian civilians pull survivors and the deceased from the wreckage, it was difficult not to feel for the people of Haiti and want to help them.Three Samuel Staples Elementary School (SSES) fifth-graders felt the same way. Greg DeCarlo, Sam Pronovost and Joey Sherwood individually approached Principal Kimberly Fox-Santora, wanting to help.

The students asked Fox-Santora if they could organize a fund-raiser through the school. With the principal’s support, they then formulated a plan.

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