epipens available for all

[londonia]

I know allergic reactions (including serious ones) can come on very quickly and without having hada aserious reaction before. Therefore, i would like the Government to make these available for sale, over the counter - i know about the difficulties about using them but think these could be overcome. I would be prepared to pay and subsidise sale for others. I have already started campaigning for this.

Er, you don't need adrenalin for every allergic reaction.

Should we all get epipen training too?
Using it wrongly can be serious. Someone I know nearly lost her thumb when she accidently got the epipen wrong way round (despite training, but when you're panicking things happen) and jabbed it into her thumb instead.
Think it sounds irresponsible to me.

How would this help? If you're in the early stages of anaphylactic shock, by the time someone has nipped to Boots to buy a couple of epi-pens you'd be dead. They're not like cough mixture where you can have an ancient one hanging around in a cupboard for years on end 'just in case'...

Do you know much about epi-pens? Eg what they cost, how short the shelf life of adrenaline actually is - my son needs them and we've already had well over £1,000 of the things I estimate, each time unused (thank god) and returned to the pharmacist to be disposed of (you can't just sling 'em in the recycling). It would cost an insane amount of money in wasted stock and the benefits really do not outweigh the risks and people would need to keep buying new ones (approx every 6 months based on the shitty shelf-life the most recent batches seem to have).

Where have you started campaigning for this - I'd suggest you talk to the Anaphylaxis Campaign and see what they have to say about it...

You could give one to everyone... But only those families in serious need would ever carry one around.

No good having the local chemist stocked full of them if it happened to be 10pm on a Saturday night when you discover there's a cashew nut in your curry.

Any links to your campaign? Wouldn't mind a nosey at your research.