By SIMON MCGREGOR-WOOD and KAREN MOONEY
JERUSALEM, Israel, Nov. 19, 2007
When Israeli fashion model Hila Elmalich died last week after years of fighting anorexia, she weighed less than 60 pounds. Her death sent a shockwave through Israel's fashion world.
Elmalich, who had been in and out of hospitals for several years, collapsed at home and died Wednesday of heart failure.
The Israeli fashion photographer and modeling agent Adi Barkan was her friend. He spent hours at her bedside over the years. "I don't know how to feel, I don't know what to say," he told ABC News Monday. "It's still too fresh."
For the last three years Barkan has been campaigning against the fashion industry's use of super thin models. He now refuses to use models whose body mass index is less than 19. The BMI is an internationally recognized measure of a person's weight in relation to their height.