Anorexic teenager starved to death amid NHS failings
Damning report into 19-year-old’s care says tragedy was ‘avoidable’
A GRIEVING family has won its five-year battle to prove that “avoidable” failings in NHS care allowed their anorexic daughter to starve to death.
Averil Hart, 19, was found unconscious on the floor of her university flat four months after being discharged from hospital still underweight.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman found yesterday that the student had been let down by every NHS organisation tasked with her care.
Her father claimed some later sought to hinder investigations into their mistakes.
Rob Behrens, the ombudsman, said her death was “avoidable” and challenged NHS managers to hire more eating disorder specialists and to boost training for junior doctors.
Nic Hart, Miss Hart’s father, said the “tragedy” of her death was “synonymous with the ongoing national failings within the NHS” and accused doctors and NHS managers of repeatedly trying to obstruct his family’s battle for the truth.
“We lost our beautiful daughter, our friend, and all we want are honest answers,” he said.
“Not only was the care that Averil received negligent, but the investigation of her death took far too long and this has resulted in further unnecessary deaths.”
Miss Hart left the Eating Disorders Unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge in August 2012 after 11 months to begin her degree in English at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
Despite having started her course in September, it was not until October that she was allocated a care co-ordinator, a junior psychologist who had never treated anyone with anorexia before and failed to track her weight. Despite instructions that a GP should assess her weekly, she saw doctors as little as three times before her death on Dec 15.
On the morning of Dec 7, Miss Hart collapsed and was taken to the Norwich Acute Trust but was not seen by a doctor for almost five hours – a delay the ombudsman called “inexplicable”.
Mr Behrens apologised for taking so long to publish his report, which hit difficulties after the five previous investigators resigned.
He said: “Averil’s tragic death would have been avoided if the NHS had cared for her appropriately. Sadly, these failures, and her family’s subsequent fight to get answers, are not unique.
“The families who brought their complaints to us have helped uncover serious issues that require urgent national attention.”
A Department of Health spokesman said: “Averil’s death was a tragedy and it is cases like hers that have led us to make a step change in the way we treat eating disorders in the NHS.”
An NHS Midlands & East spokesman said: “The NHS apologises again for these terrible events. There are now 70 NHS community eating disorder services for children and young people covering the whole of England, backed by £150m of investment.”