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PiscesObese Indian Girl Eating Herself to Death
Telegraph: Suman Khatun, a five year-old obese Indian girl who suffers from a suspected hormonal imbalance, is so insatiably hungry she is eating herself to death, doctors fear. In just one week, she devours over 10 kilograms of rice, 24 eggs, six litres of milk and five kilos of potatoes.
Her hunger even leads her to sneak out and pester her neighbours for food in the village of Metiala in the Indian state of West Bengal.
Earning just £6 a week, her parents have reached their wits' end with their daughter who weighs in at almost 12 stone [168 pounds], despite being only three and half feet tall.
"We can not feed ourselves or our other two children, let alone ourselves," says Suman's mother Belly Bibi, 33.
"When she is not fed she cries, shouts, screams and has even thrown rocks at us.
"We give her four square meals a day and two small lunches, but this is never enough.
"She is our daughter and we have no choice but to feed her."
Neighbours in the rural village also expect a daily knock on the door from Suman.
"Every day we open our doors to a smiling Suman," says Faruq Khan, who farms the next rice paddy field.
"She comes to play with our daughter, but always ends up asking for biscuits or some roti (Indian bread).
"It is no trouble at all for us, but it is difficult for her parents."
Crippled by their daughter's appetite, Suman's family has been unable to afford to travel to Calcutta for expert medical treatment.
"We have relied on the local doctor here who believes that Suman suffers from a hormonal problem," says Jalal Khan, 37, Suman's father.
"We are desperate to get her help, because we worry for Suman's health, which is not good."
Suman struggles to walk as she suffers from severe respiratory problems.
"Suman's problems were first noticed when she was three months old," says Dr P C Saha, the local doctor for Birbhum district which includes Metiala.
"I believe that it is a clear case of a malfunctioning pituitary gland.
"But without diagnostic tools I can only treat the symptoms."
Dr Saha, who is assigned to Metiala from Calcutta, which is the largest city in West Bengal, says that he has never seen a case like this in his life.
"Her parents came to me when she was young and told me that she was exhausting her mother through breast feeding and that they were supplementing this with cow's milk.
"They said that she was drinking up to 1 and a half litres of milk a day.
"She weighed seven stone when she was two years old and her weight has increased by up to 15 kilos every year.
"I have told her parents that she will die if they do not stop feeding her or seek expert medical care in Delhi or in Mumbai."
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- 6 Comments
OMG! How sad…the parents need to be more pro active because sounds like they are enabling their daughter and allowing her to eat her life away
This child needs to be put in a hospital where here weight can be monitored she weighs as mutch as I do and I’m overweight. I do agree with one of the other writers though just feed her more healthy stuff.
Prader-Willi syndrome is a congenital (present from birth) disease that involves obesity, decreased muscle tone, decreased mental capacity, and sex glands that produce little or no hormones.
If I had to make a layman’s guess I’d guess Prader-Willi syndrome too. People with P-W don’t produce a hormone that tells the brain “stop eating” and as a result they constantly feel hungry, even if they’ve recently eaten a vast amount.
If anyone hasn’t notice, let me point out they live in rural india, what the girl is eating is rice, a small bowl of gruel, a fried potatoe dish and some sort of bean “cake”/ bread because guess what that is all they have, they make their own food, the parents are poor and uneducated, in India if you are poor you can not afford health care, health care is some prayer and some boiled roots in some areas. Thousands of children live with out proper health care in many undeveloped contries, and MarcomMom its not that simple the child has a madical problem and their doctor was most likely a one time vist that cost them alot of money. Infact many impovershed families in India rely on visiting city doctor that show up once in a while or foreign visiting military or humanitarian aid groups and even then their resource definetly can’t help that child. And from the look of what they are feeding her, due to a combination of being poor and the type of hinduism practiced in many rural areas, her family is vegetarian, so shes get vegtables only when in season.
Can’t their doctor tell them to stop feeding this child simple sugars? A donut, chips, and whatever that powdered gunk is? No wonder her metabolism is raging out of control. Maybe it’s that poverty doesn’t give them a lot of choices and they buy what’s cheap, but heavens! Give that child a vegetable.