Fourth anorexia death stuns Brazil
The struggle for food has long been a drama for millions of impoverished Brazilians.
But these days the nation is transfixed by another sort of starvation: anorexia among the successful and well off.
The deaths of four young women in the last two months from anorexia - a disorder characterised by an abnormal fear of becoming obese, an aversion to food and severe weight loss - have been splashed across the front pages of newspapers. The subject has become a morbid fascination for Brazilians and a theme of a popular soap opera. It’s also touched off a debate within the fashion industry that has long presented the rail-thin model as the paragon of female beauty.
The most recent victim was Beatriz Cristina Ferraz Lopes Bastos, 23, whose death on Sunday at a hospital in Jau, 300kms northeast of Sao Paulo, was reported by national television news programmes.
Local media reports said she was 1.57 metres tall and weighed just 35kgs.
“Another victim of anorexia,” the Globo newspaper said on its website, alongside a glamorous photo of the blonde-coiffed Bastos. An English teacher and a skilled piano player, Bastos was an amateur historian and wrote a literature column for a hometown website.
Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported that she described herself as “thin” on an internet discussion group and friends said they had to “fight with her to eat”. A former boyfriend, Leandro Murgo, told reporters Bastos was a chubby teenager and became fixated on losing weight.
Brazilians were shocked at the November 14 death of 21-year-old model Ana Carolina Reston, who died of generalised infection caused by anorexia nervosa. She was reportedly 1.72 metres tall and weighed about 40kgs.
Two days later, college student Carla Sobrado Casalle, 21, died in the southeastern city of Araraquara, also with symptoms linked to anorexia.
She was 1.74 metres tall and weighed 45kgs. A third anorexia victim died later in the month.
VÃa: Gulfnews.