Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) is a chronic autoimmune disease that strikes children between the ages of newborn to 16 years. All children with JRA have joint pain, stiffness, and swelling and some also have fever and skin rashes. JRA can impede growth, damage joints, and lead to disability in adulthood.

Among four year-olds attending Head Start programs in New York City, those who had older siblings were more likely to experience respiratory symptoms including an episode of wheezing in the past year than those who were oldest or only children. Children with at least two older siblings were also 50% more likely than other children to have gone to an emergency department or been hospitalized overnight for breathing problems.

The Optometrists Association Australia is urging parents to have their children's eyes tested as new figures show that only 19 per cent of school-aged children had their eyes tested in the past financial year. Medicare figures show that just over 526,000 Australian children aged 5 to 14 were tested in the period from July 2006 to June 2007, which represents less than a fifth of Australia's population in that age group.

Just a week before the House of Commons is projected to debate the timelimit on abortion in the United Kingdom, a study has been released thatindicates that over the past 12 years, no improvement has been seen inthe survival rates of babies born before 24 weeks gestation, thecurrent legal limit for abortion in the country. According to theauthors of the study, published on BMJ.