Urgent call for a change initiated between the their families and allergen activists made by the heart-wrenching demise of Hannah Jacobs, 13, while suffering from severe dairy allergies, after the intake of a Costa Coffee hot chocolate to which she reacted fatally.

Now food allergy activists are calling for extreme changes after it was reported on the death of 13-year-old Hannah Jacobs, possessing a severe dairy allergy. Hannah, whose mistake was that she ordered a hot chocolate at Costa Coffee sent with cow’s milk instead of soya, died. This mistake stemmed from the wrong procedure followed by the coffee shop in handling allergies.

Hannah, who has been allergic to dairy, fish, and eggs since a very young age, went into a fatal allergic reaction after drinking the hot chocolate. This incident was very tragic and utilized the need for more awareness about allergies as well as good practice in the food business.

It’s not unlike a tragedy which befell another woman: Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died in 2016 after eating a Pret a Manger baguette she had bought at Heathrow Airport. The baguette’s packaging did not include references to sesame seeds, to which Natasha was allergic. In the wake of her death, Tanya and Nadim Ednan-Laperouse established the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation to advocate for better food labeling.

It was only this year that, due to the relentless campaigning, Natasha’s Law went into effect, which now compels businesses to list full ingredients on prepackaged foods. While this was a big step toward food safety, there is much more to be done.

Now, after Hannah’s death, the Ednan-Laperouses are back campaigning for the cause. They want the UK government to have an “allergy tsar”—a much-needed public appointment to focus on improving the way allergies are handled in the health, education, and business sectors. They believe this person could make a big difference in preventing such tragedies.

He said the allergy training many businesses currently provide is inadequate. Speaking to BBC Radio 4, he said, “Society and businesses need to understand food allergies better. We need to see real changes to keep people safe.”.

“Food allergies appear to be on the rise,” said Tanya Ednan-Laperouse, whose organization cites 2.4 million adults diagnosed with a food allergy in the UK. Though mortality is an unlikely aftermath, the anxiety and fear-related to the experience of living with an allergy, or having a child with the need to, are immense. “Every day is filled with worry,” she said.

Abimbola Duyile, mother to Hannah, is also working on a campaign for better allergy training in food businesses. She thinks the way Costa Coffee was training was not good enough. At the time of Hannah’s death, new staff at Costa were required to complete some online modules, followed by the passing of a quiz. This training was very inadequate and not nearly good enough, especially for staff whose first language is not English. Some staff had to translate training using Google Translate, which is far from perfect.

And now the Ednan-Laperouses and Duyile are working together to make these training programs much better. They feel that businesses ought to be more pragmatic in their allergy training for all staff so that they all know how to handle those with food allergies. The duo argued that the training currently is very plain and simple and lacks the backbone needed in giving the simple knowledge, hence the reasons most continue to ignore those allergies.

In other words, the deaths of the two young girls, Hannah Jacobs and Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, belong in the category of tragedies where perception becomes a necessity. Families and campaigners recently called for action from the UK health secretary to appoint an allergy tsar and to review food safety practices to prevent any reoccurrence of such tragedies, ensuring everyone is safe while dealing with food allergies.