A 12-year-old girl was left without food or water to die in the backyard of her foster home, delirious with pain and unable to move, a court has heard.
Crown Prosecutor Richard Coates said doctors at Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) uncovered a "massive 1.5 litres of puss" in the child's leg, caused by a fracture to her left thigh.
Sisters Toni Melville, 43, and Denise Reynolds, 42, have been charged with the manslaughter of the girl, who first started to limp following a school sports day.
Three weeks later, on July 12 last year, she died from a blood and bone infection.
Mr Coates said osteomyelitis was a condition common in children that doctors would have had "no difficulty diagnosing".
"With medical treatment she could have made a full recovery," he said on the first day of a Northern Territory Supreme Court trial in Darwin.
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