A 14-YEAR-OLD girl starved herself to death after teachers and family failed to take her to hospital - even after her weight had plunged to 34 kilograms.
Form Four student Hsu Chi-ying was a walking skeleton when she collapsed and died in a Wan Chai street, the Coroner's Court heard yesterday.
Teacher Wu Sui-fun said she was alarmed by the girl's emaciated condition, and had tried to arrange counselling, but Chi-ying kept postponing the meetings.
Coroner John Saunders expressed surprise at the failure of St Paul Secondary School in Happy Valley to force the issue.
'Very strong resistance to therapy is one of the hallmarks of anorexia,' he said. 'You were still prepared to allow her to put off seeing you even if there might have been a medical cause that needed treatment.' The day before she died, the teenager fainted at school, but staff decided not to tell her parents.
'The social worker said to give her one week to improve herself before contacting her parents,' class mistress Ting Yi said.
A coroner's jury yesterday returned an open verdict on the death, rejecting the alternative verdicts of death by natural causes or self-neglect.