How many vulnerable children will die before these lessons are finally learned?

Inquiries will centre on what was known about Khyra, her background, her family and whether they were on the "at risk" register of social workers and child protection officers.

The death will also raise questions as to whether the lessons have been learnt from the horrific case of Victoria Climbie, who, when she died in February 2000 aged eight, weighed only 3st 10lb.

Terrible death: Victoria Climbie was starved and beaten by her family

The Climbie case was meant to have been a watershed. An exhaustive inquiry, chaired by Lord Laming, made more than 100 recommendations for reform, including the creation of a children's commissioner to head a national agency.

The key theme of his subsequent report was that agencies such as schools, hospitals, social services and the police would automatically share information about children thought to be at risk.

Victoria had been sent to Britain by her parents, who hoped she would gain a better education than in her native Ivory Coast home.

But she was starved, beaten with coat hangers and bicycle chains, bound naked and kept prisoner in a freezing bathroom in a squalid flat in Haringey, North London.

There were more than 128 injuries to her tiny body when she died.

Marie-Therese Kouao, Victoria's great aunt, and her lover Carl Manning were convicted of murder and child cruelty in January 2001 and jailed for life.

Highlighting a shameful catalogue of errors, Lord Laming said Victoria could have been saved if police, social workers and doctors had done their jobs properly.

There were failings at every stage in every organisation that had a responsibility to her, he said.

Some of the social work was called a "disgrace" but the greatest failing was among senior people who were accused of "incompetence" and "buck-passing".

Victoria was seen by dozens of social workers, nurses, doctors and police officers before she died but all failed to spot and stop the abuse as she was slowly tortured to death.

Lord Laming's year-long public inquiry identified social service departments at four London boroughs, two police forces, two hospitals and a specialist children's unit which all failed to act when presented with evidence of abuse.

There have been several more court cases involving the wilful neglect or abuse of a child.

This month a couple were jailed for sexually abusing an infant and filming it on a mobile phone. Christopher Oxtoby, 27, and Katie Scott, 26, were sentenced to seven years and four-and-a-half years in prison respectively.

Northampton Crown Court heard Scott had abused the baby and allowed Oxtoby to video it.

Last April, four women who forced a two-year-old boy and and three-year-old girl to attack each other with weapons and filmed the fight were given suspended prison sentences at Plymouth Crown Court.

In December, a teenage couple were jailed for subjecting their son to nearly two months of abuse at their flat in Redfield, Bristol.

The baby, who was not named, suffered fractures to his wrists, legs ribs, index finger and spine, haemorrhages to the eyes, and cuts to the tongue.

At Bristol Crown Court his father Samuel Chamberlain, 19, was told he must serve a minimum of three-and-a-half years before being considered for release.

The mother, Kankamon Sukchuen, 19, was sentenced to four years' youth custody.

Another harrowing case is that of Jessica Randall, who was 54 days old when she was murdered by her father, Andrew Randall, in November 2005.

The baby, who had a congenital heart disease, was found to have at least nine injuries to her ribs as well as bleeding on the brain, a fractured skull and cuts to her face.

Randall, 33, was jailed for life at Northampton Crown Court in March last year.