The European Parliament has declared four actions to improve the lives of people suffering from Arthritis across Europe. The EU are calling for greater importance to be given to all rheumatic diseases in health strategies, faster diagnosis and treatment, and better access to such treatment and information and the EU Parliament can be held accountable by all organisations supporting Arthritic diseases, if it fails to act on the new declaration.

Pratchett criticises drugs ruling

Author Terry Pratchett has criticised a decision to limit the drug Aricept through the NHS to people in the later stages of Alzheimer's disease.
He told the BBC's Panorama programme the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence's ruling "feels like an insult" and needed a rethink.

NICE decided the drug was not cost-effective in the early stages.

Pratchett, who has sold 55 million books worldwide, has PCA, a rare early-onset form of the disease.

He was diagnosed with PCA, which affects the back of the brain and therefore vision and motor skills, in December 2007

Speaking to Panorama for its programme The NHS Postcode Lottery - It Could be You, he said his doctor told him about Aricept straight after he was diagnosed, but she initially said she could not prescribe it for him.

A charity cycle ride, to raise money for a hospital which treated a girl born with her liver and bowel growing outside her body, begins this weekend.

Georgina Lammin, seven, from Corsham in Wiltshire, had several operations to correct the birth defect.

She spent her first two years on a ventilator, being fed through a tube.

Her father, Tim, and his friend Chris Jack are riding from John O'Groats to Lands End to raise cash for Bristol Royal Hospital for Children.

Excellent care

Mr Lammin said: "Georgina spent four months in the neo-natal unit at St Michael's hospital, part of the children's hospital, and received excellent care both as an inpatient and an outpatient in the years afterwards.

"Raising money through the bike ride is one way in which we can show our appreciation for everything that the hospital staff did for her."

Goergina's condition, known as a "large exomphalos", meant some of her abdominal organs had developed outside her body in the umbilical cord.

Mr Lammin and Mr Jack hope to raise £2,000, which will go towards the hospital's Grand Appeal, which provides additional comforts, services and equipment for patients and their families at the hospital.

They are due to leave John O'Groats on Sunday and plan to cycle between 80 to 120 miles a day, arriving at Lands End on 27 August.

A wheely good idea

A disabled tortoise has found love after being given her own set of wheels.

Arava arrived as a new resident at Jerusalem's Biblical Zoo a few months ago, but staff quickly realised her rear legs were paralysed.

Weighing 25 kilograms, the ten-year-old spurred tortoise wasn't strong enough to move herself using just her front legs.

So, staff built Arava a unique skateboard-cum-wheelchair by strapping a metal board to her stomach with two wheels attached.

Zookeepers reckon Arava's renewed mobility has improved her quality of life no end.

She has even attracted the attention of an amorous male tortoise and the pair have begun mating.