Highlights in this issue

Abstract

Figures 1, 2: Alamy.com, 3–5: Istockphoto.com. Highlights from other journals The World Health Organization recently recommended that screen time should be restricted for children below five years of age, because it is not good for their health. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-healthy-children-need-to-sit-less-and-play-more There is ongoing controversy about what level of screen viewing leads to negative brain development and disturbed sleep and whether too much screen-based activity can cause attention and cognitive problems. Christakis et al. have been carrying out research in this area for many years and their article in PNAS showed that both human and animal experimental studies demonstrated that screen viewing has negative effects. https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/40/9851.full.pdf A girl in Sweden has started a school strike and demonstrations in favour of climate change and this has resulted in high-profile invitations to speak about how her generation will be affected by increased carbon dioxide levels. These include the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and the Pope. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg Readers may also be interested in the paper by Bhutta et al. in Archives of Disease in Childhood (ADC) entitled Climate change and global child health. What can paediatricians do? https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/104/5/417.full.pdf Another ADC paper worth reading is Matthews et al. on National registry for sudden unexpected deaths of infants and children in England: why do we need one and do families want one. https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/early/2019/04/20/archdischild-2018-316542.full.pdf