Touching tributes after Max McKenzie’s sudden death

Camberwell Grammar students are coming together to raise vital research funds, less than two years after their 15-year-old mate had a fatal anaphylactic reaction.

Tommy Auwardt, Nathan Bosmans and Raphael Champion joined Ella, Ben, Tamara, and Lucy McKenzie to remember Max McKenzie at Camberwell Grammar. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Almost two years after 15-year-old Max McKenzie suffered a fatal anaphylactic reaction, his devastated classmates have come together to raise vital funds for allergy research in his honour.

His parents Tamara and Ben McKenzie praised their son’s friends, who will on Friday host Live to the Max Day at Max’s former school Camberwell Grammar.

They lost the friendly and outgoing Max in hospital in August 2021, more than a week after the year 9 student mistakenly ate food containing nuts at a relative’s house.

“Max had an extremely close, large group of friends,” Ms McKenzie said.

“To have them among the people who are uniting and helping this just means so much to us.

“What happened to Max, we don’t want it to happen to anyone else’s child.”

Dr McKenzie, who is also an emergency physician, said the family hoped to see advancements in prevention but also treatment options – as the risk of accidents can never be eliminated.

“You just can’t predict who’s going to have that fatal reaction,” he said.

“There should actually be zero deaths from food allergy in Australia because it’s preventable at a whole lot of other levels.”

The family would love for the fundraiser to grow each year, “motivating other people at other schools who have a Max in their class” and continuing the positive impact their son had on the world.

“Max made the most of every single day and that’s one of the comforts that we have,” he said.

The funds raised by Max’s classmates — and the eight other schools taking part in Youth Action for Allergy — will be donated to the National Allergy Centre of Excellence, based at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne.

NACE director Associate Professor Kirsten Perrett said Australia was the world’s “allergy capital”, with one-in-ten toddlers clinically diagnosed and numbers continuing to rise.

“Each year, 10 Australians die from an anaphylactic reaction,” she said.

“There is no cure.”

But she said there was “exciting” research underway, from immunotherapy treatments to “retrain” the immune system to important prevention studies, and was confident we were on track to reach Max’s family’s goal.

“It’s my life passion to find new ways to prevent food allergy from occurring and to treat food allergy early and ultimately so that, one day, we can get every child to start school allergy free,” she said.