Anguish of anorexic child

A four-year-old girl suffering from anorexia is being kept alive by a feeding tube which pumps food directly into her stomach.

Annie Jones, who has not eaten for three years, weighs less than two stone.

Now her parents are trying to raise £80,000 to send her to a specialist clinic in America. Her mother Lisa, 31, said Annie's problem first became apparent when her mother tried to wean her onto solid food three years ago. Her daughter refused meals and lived on formula milk until she was three.

Mrs Jones, of Normanby, Middlesbrough, said: "She tries every day to eat but if she has any food she will politely leave the table, go to the bathroom and throw up."

Annie was referred to the specialist child feeding team at London's Great Ormond Street last year. But eight months on she is still reliant on the feeding tube.

Infantile anorexia, unlike adult anorexia, is not thought to have anything to do with body image.

Dee Dawson of the Rhodes Farm Clinic in London, which specialises in child eating disorders, said: "There is no doubt this little girl is anorexic. But she does not have anorexia nervosa, or bulimia, which is a refusal to take nutrition through a morbid fear of being fat. There appears to be nothing physically wrong, so the problem has to be psychological."