Girl, five, who could eat herself to death
LITTLE Ava Carvey has to be locked out of the kitchen – due to a potentially fatal condition that means she cannot stop eating.
The five-year-old’s parents fitted a gate to the kitchen door because they fear she might eat herself to death while desperate for food.
Ava has been on a strict low calorie diet since doctors diagnosed Prader-Willi Syndrome at nine weeks old. It means she can never have a birthday cake or Easter egg treat. Around 40 babies a year are born in the UK with the rare genetic condition. Sufferers are at risk of obesity and diabetes.
Ava’s mother Marika, 35, and father Martyn, 32, never let their other two children eat in front of her.
Mrs Carvey of Bromley, south-east London, said: “Ava is always hungry. She’d eat whatever she could lay her hands on. She’d eat until she was sick. Her stomach could even burst.”