Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are labeled as allergic to penicillin, although only about 10% of them actually are. This labeling prevents them from optimal treatment in real time and costs the state a lot of money.
The heads of the Israeli Allergy and Clinical Immunology Association this week sent a position paper to the managers of the four health insurance funds in Israel. They call for practical steps to be taken to change the phenomenon, to work to reduce the number of insured people who are falsely defined as allergic to penicillin. They claim that until now, the removal of the "penicillin allergy" label required a referral to allergy centers in hospitals, but the lines are very long. They also claim that the use of alternative and more expensive drugs significantly burdens the system. The labeling affects the considerations in adjusting the antibiotic treatment to the patient or the injured and requires finding medicinal alternatives, and thus, there are quite a few problems.