National Allergy Week

I've just discovered it's supposed to be National Allergy Week in the UK. That's the week after World Allergy Week - now that's excellent timing. In fact it's so well co-ordinated that the nation's allergy specialists declared their backing for World Allergy Week last week, missing out their own National Allergy Week.

Is it too much to hope that a national week is truly national and involves all parties? Even better that the national week takes place at the same time as the world week? If you follow these things even a little, you will know there's a surplus of special weeks and days - sometimes they seem little more than a PR stunt. So to make an impact, a Week needs a lot going for it. Two weeks on the same topic one after the other are guaranteed to flop.

So far as I can tell National Allergy Week centres on Allergy UK. I checked their Facebook page but there's nothing there. However their web-site has a press release, which reflects what the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology said last week.

In fact their entire PR strategy seems to centre on Weeks - three of them in the last year. This is the list of press releases on their site for the last 12 months. There's just five of them:

• National Allergy Week: 11th - 17th April 2011
• Food Allergy Intolerance Week: 24th - 28th January 2011
• Indoor Allergy Week: 25th - 29th October 2010
• Allergy Friendly Hotels
• National Allergy Week: 10th - 14th May 2010

For the record here is a list of the proposed weeks for the coming year:

• Indoor Allergy Week: 14th -20th November 2011
• Food Allergy and Intolerance Week: 23rd - 29th January 2012
• National Allergy Week: 23rd - 29th April 2012
• Indoor Allergy Week: 12th -18th November 2012

RAS