Christmas diet girl who died of anorexia ‘didn’t get proper help’

Anna Wood, 16, embarked on a harmless post-Christmas diet to shed a few pounds but was soon caught in the grip of the eating disorder.

Just months later her major organs failed and she died of a heart attack. Today her mother told how the talented A-grade student, who went to £12,000-a-year Wimbledon High School, may still be alive if she had had better treatment.

Christine Gibson says she was first alerted to her daughter's illness in March last year when the school nurse raised concerns over Anna's weight. She was immediately taken to her GP by her parents then began weekly sessions at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, where she began seeing a dietician.

But despite weekly meetings, the illness "accelerated and took a firm grip" and she began to deteriorate rapidly. In August last year, she was eventually admitted to the eating disorder unit at the private Capio Nightingale Hospital, Marylebone.

Less than five months later she was discharged — despite doctors acknowledging she was at risk of dying and was not putting on the required weight, said Mrs Gibson, 51.

The accounts administrator from Wimbledon said: "Anna was admitted to hospital as an NHS patient but they discharged her in December when they shouldn't have done." She added that Anna's consultant psychiatrist Professor Hubert Lacey, who made the decision to send Anna home, later admitted she had a mortality risk of 15-20 per cent. Mrs

Gibson said: "If the risk factor was so high, why did he discharge her?

"I remember the moment he told us he was letting her go. As much as I wanted my little girl home, my stomach churned as I knew she was not well enough. We asked if they'd take her back but they wouldn't."

Anna should have been in her final year of GCSEs but had missed so much school she decided to take the rest of the year out and started a part-time job working in a nursery three miles from her home in Tooting. Mrs Gibson said: "She was walking to work each day, burning yet more calories and losing more weight.

"We realised she was skipping breakfast and pretending to eat her packed lunch." On February 11 she collapsed on the way to work and was taken to St George's Hospital, Tooting.

She had surgery for a perforated ulcer but her ravaged body was unable to heal itself and she died of a heart attack on March 26 after six weeks in intensive care as she suffered brain damage, paralysis, a collapsed lung and could not breathe without a ventilator.

Mrs Gibson and Anna's father Paul Wood, 62, will today attend a service at Southwark Cathedral for those who have lost their lives through eating disorders — and hope November's inquest will highlight how Anna was "failed by the system".

He mother said: "After discharge from Capio Nightingale, Anna got no individual therapy in her weekly sessions at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, even though I asked on several occasions for it.

"She was mismanaged by the authorities. If she had been treated correctly she might be here today."

A Capio Nightingale Hospital spokesman said: "An independent internal review has already been undertaken and no material criticism was found."