NORTH PROVIDENCE — As people await news from Germany on the risky coma treatment that Matthew Irving, 21, is undergoing to try to end the constant pain that has filled his body for the last five years, the School Committee is expected to show its support for the former North Providence High School honor student by approving a fundraising event for him.

School Committee Chairman Vito Martinelli said that when the North Providence Taxpayers Association disclosed that it hoped to use the football field at the high school for an Aug. 24 event featuring at least six bands and an array of entertainment to help pay Irving’s medical bills, he told the group it had School Department permission.

“I thought I could act on my own, but since then, I’ve been told by our legal counsel that the request has to go before the full committee,” Martinelli said.

Since the committee’s next regular meeting is July 30 — deemed too late because the association needs to sign contracts with vendors — Martinelli called a special meeting at 6:30 tonight to take up the request.

Ever since Matthew Irving’s story became more widely known, townspeople have shown their support for the honors graduate and former altar boy with their donations and their prayers.

Diagnosed five years ago with reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD) he has endured what has been described as a state of constant pain throughout his body that made him sensitive to sound, light and even the slightest touch. Doctors in Germany are putting him under a coma for seven days and pumping his body with the anesthetic ketamine.

His mother, Nancy Irving, is providing updates on his progress in a family blog on their Web site www.setmattfreeofrsd.com.

She said that the night before the procedure, they did something they rarely ever did in the years Matthew has undergone various treatments. They ordered a plate of ice cream, one of the few things that go down easy for him.

On Tuesday, they arrived at the hospital at 11 a.m. and Matthew was put into the coma around 11:35 a.m. German time.

Nancy Irving said she waited five hours to see her son and that when she did, she was amazed. Despite all the tubes, machines and equipment, Matthew, for the first time in five years, “had an incredibly peaceful and serene look on his face, as if his body was pain free.”

He is not entirely out of the woods. The physician in charge of the treatment “explained that the first two or three days of the treatment are usually uneventful, but it is from there on that things can really start to change.”

She expressed thanks for all the “golden hearts” that have reached out to her son and the many prayers and donations from North Providence to Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada, Thailand, Texas, California, Illinois and Singapore, which have left her speechless.

Matthew’s father, Russell, who remains in North Providence, disclosed that while the family had been originally told that the flight from Boston to Germany for Matthew and his mother and brother Daniel, which accommodated a stretcher, was going to cost $51,000, a Lufthansa manager, on hearing Matthew’s story, reduced the price to $15,000.

rdujardi@projo.com