Foreign adopted children and children of asylum applicants and refugees, newly arrived in Denmark, often have lived under conditions that make the following diagnostic considerations relevant: scabies, lice, impetigo and fungal skin infections, nutritional iron deficiency or bleeding, anaemia caused by hook worms in the gastrointestinal tract, malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis B, HIV infection and various intestinal parasites. Haemoglobinopathies including sickle cell anaemia and talassaemia should also be kept in mind in anaemia. Immigrant children are admitted to hospital approximately twice as frequently as Danish children but with the same diagnoses apart from some increased frequency of psychological and behavioural disturbances and talassaemia.