Sister of model who died of heart attack, also modeled & just died of heart attack

Now her 18 year-old sister, Eliana Ramos, was found dead at her grandparent’s house in the Montevideo, Uruguay on Tuesday. Eliana was also a model and also died of an apparent heart attack:

Two sisters, both models, have died of apparent heart attacks within months of each other — a family tragedy that came as the fashion world debates how to protect the health of painfully thin runway models.

Eliana Ramos, 18, was found dead at her grandparent’s home in the Uruguayan capital Tuesday, officials said. Her sister Luisel, 22, died shortly after stepping off a runway last Aug. 2 during a fashion show in Montevideo.

While no medical report was immediately released after Eliana’s death, Judge Roberto Timbal told the online news outlet Observa that she died of a heart attack. An autopsy on her sister found she died of a heart attack.

The judge told Observa that “nothing out of the ordinary” appeared to be involved in Eliana’s death, but that an autopsy was conducted and final test results would be issued in a month.

Other models said neither sister suffered from an eating disorder.

However, the deaths drew widespread media attention in Latin America, where the fashion industry’s treatment of young women has been the subject of debate since anorexia was blamed for the deaths of model Ana Carolina Reston and three other Brazilian women in December.

That’s incredibly sad for that family and brings home the need to have a larger norm for models. 21 year-old Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston died in November from anorexia, as did three other Brazilian models late last year. When young women are dying after starving themselves for the profession, when is the fashion industry going to wise up and start using normal-sized models? I’m not talking about putting obese women on the runway as Gaultier did as a kind of joke, I’m talking about still-thin US size 4 and 6 models.

When Luisel died at age 22 she was just 98 pounds at 5 foot 9, which gave her a BMI of 14.5. The World Health Organization considers a BMI of 16 to indicate starvation. Her sister Elania is listed as 5′9″ also, and is said to be a US size 4 on her profile on Fashion Model’s Directory, but her weight is not listed and it’s unknown if that information is out of date. If she was starving herself for a show, it probably was out of date.

Pictures from Model’s Blog, Fashion Model Directory, and Yahoo.

All pictures below are of recently-deceased Eliana. The model sisters’ sad father is shown inset.

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