 These days you are seeing a lot of children are going through a lot of problems in terms of cough and colds, frequent sneezing, children getting frequently ill and most of the times when they go to a pediatrician, so they are told that the child has an allergic cough or a running nose or a sneezing or some viral infections. Yes, in coming times, allergies have gone up significantly in our country. There are a number of contributing factors to that, particularly the environmental pollution that is one major factor. Then we have allergies to dust, allergies to smoke. So all those things are definitely increased because of the environment which is around the children these days. The second common things what we are seeing or what we have observed over time is because of increasing management of infections or prevention of infections in terms of vaccinations, so infections are gradually reducing. So this concept is like we are actually following the trend of the West where now infections have become much less and allergies have become much more. And in India we are also following a similar trend where now allergies are becoming more and more common. A very very important point here to understand from parents point of view is that if their child is having an allergic cough, so most of the parents feel that we give the medicine, the cough cold becomes better and we stop the medicine and everything would be fine. But a very very important point for parents to understand is that allergies is nothing which has come from outside. Allergy is a child's or anyone's inherent body tendency to react to a particular allergic. So allergies in effect cannot be cured but allergies have to be kept under control. Allergies have very very characteristic features. They are recurrent, so they will come again and again as and when a child gets exposed to a particular trigger. Then allergies are persistent, they will take longer times to go and if we don't adequately control them, allergies increase over time. So which means that allergies are progressive. So as far as possible once a medication is started, once a diagnosis is made of an allergic problem, it is better to control the problem and keep it well controlled over a long period of time. Most of the pediatricians would prescribe medicines for allergies and also advise that give medicines, give a particular medicine for say a month or month and a half or two months which actually needs to continue. We most of the time see that parents stop the medications on their own that the child is absolutely well as of now but actually speaking that is not to be done. I would like to name certain food items also which leads to allergies which are common like nuts, seafood which we see, egg allergies are very very common and in children these days we see a lot of allergic reactions or allergies, cuffs related to the junk foods, the colored foods and foods with preservatives which the children take. So this would include like toffees, chocolates, chips, sauce, jam, juices, ice cream. So all types of processed foods which children take which have preservatives and chemicals also tend to lead to a lot of allergies which if possible if as far as possible if we can avoid during the acute phase of an allergic reaction or allergic cough it is better for the parents as well as for the child.