Sarah Ferguson Opens Up About Her Uncle Who Died After Having an Allergic Reaction to a Sandwich

Sarah Ferguson is honoring her late uncle’s legacy by lending her voice to an important cause.

Fergie, as the Duchess of York is affectionately known, recently became a patron of the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, a charitable organization that campaigns for allergy research and safety, named in memory of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse.

Ednan-Laperouse was just 15-years-old when she died from an allergic reaction after unknowingly eating a sandwich with sesame seeds at a Pret a Manger in Heathrow Airport in 2016, according to ITV.

Her parents, Tanya and Nadim Ednan-Laperouse, have since established the charity in their daughter’s name and have been working to instill “Natasha’s Law,” a bill that requires all food businesses in England and Northern Ireland to list every ingredient in their pre-packaged foods. It is expected to go into law by summer 2021.

While opening up to ITV about her decision to partner with the charity and support the legislation, Fergie, 59, revealed that she had a particularly close connection to the cause — her late uncle had also died from an allergic reaction to a sandwich.

WATCH: In her support for the parents of @NatashasLegacy, Fergie tells us that her uncle died from an allergic reaction to a sandwich.@SarahTheDuchess is now supporting #NatashasLaw after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse died after eating a @Pret sandwich pic.twitter.com/AFpOs6FLNi

— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) June 25, 2019

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“My uncle, age 10, died of a crab sandwich at Brancaster Beach and my father was never the same after that,” she explained to the local outlet. “And my grandmother never forgot John — he was called John.”

Because her uncle’s death occurred many years before she was born, Fergie said she did not think much of the tragedy and how much her grandmother emotionally endured until she started spending time with Natasha’s parents.

“It wasn’t until working with Nadim and Tanya and being with them that I suddenly realized, ‘Can you imagine what my grandmother went through?'” she shared with the outlet. “In those days, forget it.”

“He was out on the beach with nanny — he wasn’t even with my grandmother or father — he was on his own with nanny and he died within minutes,” she added.

Since announcing her partnership with the foundation, Fergie has been vocal on social media, urging her followers to use Natasha’s death as “a watershed moment” to help “promote research.”

An honour to join Natasha Ednan-Laperouse’s parents Nadim and Tanya to launch @NatashasLegacy on @thismorning with @hollywills and @Schofe. We need to make her death a watershed moment and support research into a cure #natashaslaw pic.twitter.com/v5w7t55YEG

— Sarah Ferguson (@SarahTheDuchess) June 25, 2019

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“An honour to join Natasha Ednan-Laperouse’s parents Nadim and Tanya to launch @NatashasLegacy on @thismorning with @hollywills and @Schofe,” she wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “We need to make her death a watershed moment and support research into a cure #natashaslaw”

In a separate tweet, Fergie added: “So proud to have been asked to be patron of @NatashasLegacy. Today we’re delighted to welcome Government announcement of Natasha’s Law to support allergy sufferers but there is much more work to do to promote research”

According to the National Health Service (NHS), allergies are very common in the UK and are believed to affect more than one in four people at some point. NHS also states that the number of those suffering from allergies continues to increase each year, though the cause behind that remains unclear.

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Some researchers have suggested that living in a cleaner environment has caused the human body to deal with fewer germ interactions which, in turn, decrease the immune systems’ tolerance.

Professor Stephen Holgate, from the department of medicine at the University of Southampton, also told ITV that people have become more sensitive to allergies because of particular lifestyle and diet choices, as well as chemical exposure.

“We’ve changed our diet dramatically over the last 30 years. We’re exposed to hundreds and hundreds of different new chemicals,” he told the outlet. “We are doing things today — interacting with our environment — in an entirely different way than we did 30 odd years ago.”

“All of these things are changing the way our bacteria exists, both in our gut, on our skin and in our lungs and the change of those bacteria has altered the immune response,” Holgate added. “People are becoming more sensitive, they’re becoming allergic.”