This camp in the US is giving chronically ill kids a chance to have fun

Mota plays a game of Gaga Ball with fellow campers at the Frost Valley YMCA sleepaway camp in Claryville, New York. The camp partnered with Children's Hospital at Montefiore so kids with autoimmune diseases could attend for the first time. Photo: AP

A doctor advising ... sleepaway camp? That’s how a 12-year-old diagnosed with lupus found himself laughing on a high-ropes course as fellow campers hoisted him into the air.

"It’s really fun,” said Dylan Aristy Mota, thrilled that he got a chance at the rite of childhood – thanks to doctors reassuring his mum that they'd be at this upstate New York camp, too. Dylan felt good knowing if "anything else pops up, they can catch it faster than if we had to wait til we got home.”