A CHILD burns victim whose plight won a region's heart, has died before she could be brought to Britain, to undergo life-saving surgery.

People across the North-East raised £8,000 to bring seven-year-old Romanian Mariana Nechitescu to Teesside, where plastic surgeon Charles Viva was offering to operate on her.

The youngster who suffered 85 per cent burns when petrol was poured over her, has succumbed to an infection.

Rod Jones, founder of the charity Convoy Aid, launched an appeal to raise money to save the girl's life after being told that gangsters had turned the child into a human fireball in revenge for her father's refusal to help them, and hospital authorities were not equipped to treat her.

The Romanians, however, said her father had accidentally set his own daughter alight, while they insisted medical services could treat her.

A devastated Mr Jones said it was specialist supplies bought with the donations of kind Teessiders that kept the little girl alive for seven months.

Mr Jones said: "If she had come here sooner, Charles Viva said he had more than a 50 per cent chance of saving her. But her chances of survival diminished month by month."

Mr Jones said when the heating system in Mariana's hospital broke down, she was sent home, to her aunt's house, where she spent two days. She returned to hospital, where she died two days later from an infection that went to her brain.

Mr Jones said half the £8,000 raised had gone on medication and high protein meals. He said the remainder would be spent helping other Romanian children.