A 14-year-old model from Russia, Vlada Dzyuba went into coma after a 13-hour fashion show in Shanghai, China on Wednesday but died on Friday, October 20 after she was rushed to the hospital.
According to the Siberian Times, the model had been on a three-month assignment in China, during which she was only supposed to work three hours a week.
However, her modeling contract kept her working much longer.
Well, Elvira Zaitseva, head of Vlada’s modeling agency Perm, told Daily Mail:
“No-one expected it to lead to such consequences,” We are now reaping what we have sown.”
The causes of Vlada’s death are believed to be meningitis and exhaustion. Soon before walking in the show where she collapsed, she had a high temperature. She was scared to go to the hospital and didn’t have medical insurance. “She was calling me, saying ‘Mama, I am so tired. I so much want to sleep.’ It must have been the very beginning of the illness,” her mother Oksana told NTV, according to the International Business Times. “And then her temperature shot up. I didn’t sleep myself and was calling her constantly, begging her to go to the hospital.”
Oksana was unable to obtain a visa to see Vlada before she passed away, according to The Daily Mail. Police are now investigating what caused her death.
In 2013, New York passed a state law that models under 18 can’t work after midnight on school nights, in order to protect them from being overworked, The Guardian reports.
New York Representative Grace Meng introduced the Child Performers Protection Act to Congress in 2015 to provide protections at a federal level, and it was reintroduced in September.
The Council of Fashion Designers of America recommends that designers avoid hiring models under 16 or keeping models under 18 at work past midnight.
