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A schoolboy may never be able to smile again after he was shot in the face by a sniper with an airgun. Jordan Winstanley, 13, was blasted by a gunman hiding in bushes as he walked with friends. The teenager collapsed to the ground with blood pouring from a hole in his cheek. He was rushed to [...]

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A three-year-old girl suffers from a rare digestive condition which means she can’t gobble down her food – because it could kill her. Milly Williams must carefully chew every mouthful because she is unable to swallow properly and is liable to choke. The condition means it takes her four minutes to eat a single strawberry. Her [...]

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Thousands of households, including families with disabled children, have been incorrectly told they are likely to see their welfare payments cut, charities and social security advisers say. From next year, couples or single parents in England who receive more than £500 a week in benefits will have their payments cut. However, it has emerged that [...]

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Fertility treatment increases the risk of birth defects in babies, according to the largest scientific study of its kind. Babies conceived by assisted techniques are at least one-third more likely to suffer from congenital problems than those conceived naturally, the new research has found. Birth defects including heart, spinal and urinary tract problems, limb abnormalities [...]

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Research on more than 300,000 babies found those born following a fertility treatment used when men have low sperm counts or motility problems had a significantly higher risk of developing abnormalities than those conceived naturally. Babies born as a result of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) – where a single sperm is injected directly into the [...]

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To the outside world, they may look different from everyone else. But for the Johnston family, the only difference between them and everyone else is that they are a little smaller. Amber and Trent Johnson, from Barnesville, Georgia, and their five children are the largest family of achondroplasia dwarfs, with a type of dwarfism that [...]

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The six-month-old girl with a rare genetic disorder and a ‘bucket list’ blog created by her parents died of complications from the disease yesterday, her father wrote today. Avery Lynn Canahuati was born in November with spinal muscular atrophy type 1 (SMA) and was given only months to live. Her father Mike had chronicled his [...]

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A Lincolnshire girl who suffered serious injuries at birth and needs 24-hour care has been awarded compensation worth £10.8m. A judge at London’s High Court approved the award to Milly Evans, 11, the daughter of a former Red Arrows pilot. Milly was born at Lincoln County Hospital on 1 March 2001, but later suffered a [...]

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The mothers of a string of babies born with a birth defect on the same Kent street are convinced they’ve found the cause – a banned weedkiller that’s the subject of a legal battle being fought in the US by famed lawyer Erin Brockovich. Across a period of 12 years, at least nine children have [...]

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On the night that Jude Richmond and her daughter Millie went missing last March, I received an email from Gloucestershire Police asking me to call them. I read it again to make sure it wasn’t a hoax, then telephoned the number on the screen. The police had found my email address on Jude’s computer. An [...]

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Louise Williams could lose more than a million pounds in compensation after a judge found her negligent. She had carefully strapped Emma Hughes into the back seat to drive home when they were involved in a head on collision. But Mr Justice Blair ruled that, had she used the child seat with a five-point harness which [...]

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A baby suffered catastrophic brain damage after a junior doctor failed to spot she had meningitis and lied to her parents that he had sought a second opinion from a consultant, a court heard yesterday. Dr Halenahalli Vijayakumar told Mark and Diane Pierce their daughter Kate was merely suffering from viral tonsillitis. But when they requested [...]

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The mother of a severely disabled girl has been giving evidence in the trial of the child’s grandparents who are accused of her manslaughter. Rebecca McKeown, 14, died in hospital in March 2001. David Johnston, 88, and his wife Sarah, 86, from Carwood Drive in Glengormley, deny manslaughter and child cruelty. Cheryl McKeown said her daughter was [...]

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A boy can now have fun splashing in puddles after life-changing surgery in the U.S helped him to run and jump for the first time. Hari Kieft, 2, was diagnosed with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy after being born 10 weeks premature, leaving him confined to a wheelchair. His devoted parents Cerianne and Richard feared he may [...]

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Cansu Ozkan is seeking damages from her mother Ceyda Ozkan, who crashed the family car into a tree following a drinking session at a party. Cansu suffered serious face, back, leg and wrist injuries while her stepsister Filiz, 21, who was heavily pregnant at the time, was killed in the accident on Jan 1, 2009.   [...]

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Thursday was a day off school for Thusha Kamaleswaran, who spent the morning watching her favourite cartoon shows on television. But at 1pm she switched channel for the lunchtime news. She knew she wasn’t supposed to, but she couldn’t help herself. Thusha’s parents had told her not to watch, desperate to protect her from hearing [...]

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Laurence Clark is a stand-up comedian who has cerebral palsy. He lives with his wife Adele and his two sons Tom, seven, and Jamie, nine months. Here he describes both the challenges and the attitudes people have towards families like his. I guess my family does not fit with the typical image of 2.4 children. [...]

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Three men have been jailed for life for a gang-related shooting that left a five-year-old girl paralysed. Nathaniel Grant, Anthony McCalla and Kazeem Kolawole were sentenced to a total of 45 years at the Old Bailey yesterday for gunning down Thusha Kamaleswaran at her aunt’s south London shop in March last year in what the judge [...]

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It is a country that can seem inured to violence from sheer familiarity. But this was a crime so shocking that even South Africa has begun to search its soul. A disabled 17-year-old girl, said to have the mental capacity of a five-year-old, was allegedly gang-raped by seven men and boys in an assault that [...]

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A baby boy born with six legs has had a successful operation to remove his four extra limbs, doctors said today. The youngster from Karachi in Pakistan was believed to have had a parasitic twin, which had not developed properly in the womb, resulting in the extra legs. Doctors examined MRI, blood tests, and CT [...]

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A London hospital has lost its legal bid to save a children’s heart unit after the Court of Appeal ruled that the national review recommending its closure was in fact lawful. The Royal Brompton Hospital had temporarily derailed NHS plans to concentrate children’s heart surgery in fewer hospitals after a judge found the ‘Safer and [...]

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It may be almost four months away, but Thusha Kamaleswaran is already eagerly anticipating her seventh birthday on July 20. Her excitement is heightened by the tragically unrealistic expectation that she will be able to enjoy the only present she truly wants – to be able to walk and dance once more. When the youngster [...]

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Thusha Kamaleswaran was hit as Nathaniel Grant, Anthony McCalla, and Kazeem Kolawole hunted down a rival at her aunt’s shop in south London. Judge Martin Stephens QC told the men: “Not one of you has shown a sliver of remorse. Shooting into a shop, a confined space where it was known there were people present, [...]

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Three men are due to be sentenced today over a gang shooting that left a five-year-old girl paralysed. Nathaniel Grant, Anthony McCalla and Kazeem Kolawole were hunting down a rival gang member when they shot Thusha Kamaleswaran at her aunt’s south London shop in March last year. They were found guilty last month of causing grievous [...]

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Andre McCollins, from New York, was 18 when he was strapped face down to a table at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Caton, Massachusetts, after failing to remove his jacket during a class. In footage of the incident released this week, Mr McCollins is heard screaming “help me” and writhing in pain as 31 individual [...]

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A mother has revealed how her son’s life-threatening brain tumour was spotted thanks to a routine eye-check up. Little Joel Sheldon was booked in to see a specialist about his rare condition called heterochromia, which causes both eyes to be different colours. But immediately after the appointment he was rushed to Birmingham Children’s Hospital, as medics [...]

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Nathaniel Grant, Kazeem Kolawole and Anthony McCalla were last week convicted by a jury at the Old Bailey of causing grievous bodily harm to Thusha Kamaleswaran. She was shot in the chest as she danced and played in her aunt’s shop in south London in March last year with the subsequent injuries leaving her paralysed [...]

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A Manchester family are rallying support to save their daughter’s face with a pioneering US procedure. A year ago, three-year-old Maha Asghar was diagnosed with Parry-Romberg syndrome, a rare facial disorder affecting one in a million people. The disorder means her immune system is turning on itself and beginning to destroy her face. The family [...]

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At six weeks old, Meg Devereux-Roberts smiled. But since then, she has not met a single developmental milestone on time. She has never spoken, couldn’t sit up until she was two, or crawl until she was three. Now 14, Meg is blind, suffers from epileptic seizures and cannot walk. She requires round-the-clock care from her [...]

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A vacation in the Magic Kingdom should be enough to make a child giddy with excitement, but one young boy was left trembling with fear after he was subjected to an invasive TSA pat-down. The three-year-old, confined to a wheelchair due to a recently broken leg, was with his family at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, [...]

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Thousands more were said to be considering the treatment, which sparked a fierce debate over the limits of medical intervention when it was first revealed five years ago. Doctors in Seattle devised a series of treatments to stop a girl called Ashley – a nine-year-old girl born with developmental disabilities that left her unable to [...]

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Police will pay out a five-figure sum to the grieving family of a mother who killed herself and her disabled daughter after a decade of unchecked abuse by yobs. Officers failed to protect Fiona Pilkington who turned her car into a fireball while she and 18-year-old Francecca Hardwick, who had severe learning difficulties, sat inside. [...]

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In Anthony Steele’s world, his back garden is an ocean upon which a pirate ship sails in search of treasure. But the seven-year-old’s fantasy has been sunk by council officials who say his Jolly Roger breaches planning rules on ‘advertising’. They acted after an unnamed neighbour made a complaint about the flag, which flutters from [...]

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The past 10 years have been a bit of a rollercoaster for Sara Hunt and her family. In 2001 both of her sons were diagnosed with a rare, inherited disease which attacks the brain and nervous system and can quickly lead to disability and death. The same disease, adrenoleukodystrophy or ALD, was famously depicted in [...]

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Fashionable brands have long dominated the sportswear market, but up to now few have specifically targeted disability sports. Nike has now become the first to produce a sole for a blade used by amputee runners. Has the era of Paralympic chic dawned? It’s one of the most widely recognised, and lucrative, brands in the world. [...]

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A six-year-old West Midland girl who suffered severe brain damage in a car crash involving a speeding driver has been awarded £5m compensation. Cerys Edwards, of Sutton Coldfield, has needed round-the-clock care since the crash in 2006. Antonio Singh Boporan, of Little Aston, Sutton Coldfield, was convicted of dangerous driving in April 2008. via BBC [...]

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A 12-year-old girl left with a “devastating” brain injury after her premature birth has been awarded £7.3m. Danielle Marshall, of Letchworth Garden City, was in the special care baby unit at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage when she suffered a collapsed lung. The East and North Herts NHS Trust admitted negligence in failing to respond [...]

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A 13-year-old boy is among those arrested after a disabled father-of-two was left with a severe head injury following an argument with a group of youths. George Craddock, 42, of Wirral, Merseyside, is fighting for his life in hospital after the attack. An 18-year-old youth has been arrested on suspicion of wounding following the arrest [...]

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Young disabled people are failing to report hate crimes to the police because they fear they will not be taken seriously. Nearly two in three young disabled people say they have been victims of disability hate crimes, such as being verbally or physically abused or suffering threatening behaviour, a survey by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign [...]

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Laura Wright was just 15 when she won the BBC Radio 2 Chorister of the Year competition in 2005. For the soprano, now 21, the moment marked what she hoped would be the end of the ill-health that had threatened to rob her of both her singing ambitions – and her mobility. When she was [...]

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A mother today made an emotional plea to Londoners to help her five-year-old daughter walk unaided for the first time. Jayde Michael, 24, was told that her daughter Mia – who was born at 27 weeks weighing less than 2lb – had just three weeks to live and would remain in a “vegetable” state after [...]

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If you thought break dancing was hard – imagine doing it with no legs. A 22-year-old Indian man, who was born handicapped following a birth defect, has become a star with his remarkable dance moves which put four-limbed b-boy dancers to shame. Vinod Thakur even went on India’s Got Talent after learning his show-stopping hip-hop [...]

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A five-year-old girl was “happily playing” in a shop when she was hit by gunfire and left permanently paralysed, the Old Bailey heard yesterday. Thusha Kamaleswaran died twice as medics battled to save her life following the shooting at Stockwell Food and Wine in south London in March last year. Three men with their faces [...]

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Pregnant women with diabetes are almost four times more likely to have a baby with a birth defect, according to research published in Diabetologica. Experts found a higher risk of infants suffering serious problems if their mothers had Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, compared with women without the condition. The range of birth defects [...]

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Pregnant women with diabetes are almost four times more likely to have a baby with a birth defect than women without the condition, warn researchers. Their findings suggest that higher blood sugar levels in the mother raise the risk. Around one in 13 babies born to a woman with type 1 or type 2 diabetes [...]

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Share When Hollie Arnold was born with just one arm, she never let it hold her back. Now the determined teenager has been fitted with a special weighted prosthetic arm to allow her to fulfill her dream of throwing a javelin in the London 2012 Paralympics. Hollie, 17, has spent years perfecting her javelin technique [...]

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The mother of Abigail Witchalls, who was left paralysed after being stabbed in front of her son, said the media intrusion following the attack was in some ways more traumatic than tending to her daughter. Baroness Hollins told the Leveson Inquiry that much of the reporting was “honest and compassionate” but the scale of it [...]

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Just months after receiving a pair of carbon fibre legs, nine-year-old Jessy Hatch has completed her first long-distance run. Blighted by a tragic genetic condition – caused by her biological mother’s addiction to meth- she was born with badly formed limbs and aged 11 months underwent a double amputation. For years she learned to walk [...]

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A girl has signed up to run to help her severely disabled friend take part in a race for the first time. Amber Carbon, 14, will run in the Sport Relief Mile with Vitor Jaquite, 28, who suffers from cerebral palsy. Amber, from Maida Vale, who is in her school athletics team and cross country [...]

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The mother of a man left severely disabled at birth following a hospital blunder has finally succeeded in a battle for £6million compensation to pay for his care. Ronak Patel, 29, does not have the use of his arms and legs, has little speech or vision and cannot roll, sit unaided or stand because his [...]

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