Childhood Cancer Outcomes

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

I say a big “thank you” to my fellow Hampshire MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), for securing this important debate. I back her children’s cancer mission.

I saw the local news about Sophie Fairall. Her family faced a sad and difficult condition with dignity and courage, and I know the House will join me in wishing Charlotte, Gareth and Sophie’s sisters Lucy and Amelia well. I pay tribute to their campaign to improve outcomes for all children who have cancer.

It is every parent’s worst nightmare to hear that a life-threatening disease may affect their child, and cancer strikes horror into every heart. Children go downhill very fast with any illness, and the rapidness of cell division means cancer spreads faster in younger people. As we have heard, every year 1,800 children get a cancer diagnosis, and the biggest childhood cancer, leukaemia, accounts for about 30%.

Treatment is constantly improving. For instance, when I was at school in the 1970s, a classmate, Alison Brownlow, got leukaemia and sadly died at the age of 17. Ironically, her favourite song before her diagnosis was “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks. I think of her every time I hear that song, although she did not enjoy many seasons and was always desperate to return to school. Just over 30% of children survived leukaemia in the 1970s, but things improved fast; in the 1990s, my cousin, Suzanne Adamson, had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia when she was 10 but she has gone on to have a wonderful life, with a second child on the way. So there are some good outcomes and the leukaemia survival rates in the 1990s were at 80%. Cancer survival rates overall are now at 84%, but there is still room for improvement, as is shown by the death of Sophie.

One of my constituents, Alison Carson-Blake, wrote to me about her son Jake, who was just eight years old when he was diagnosed with stage 4 bulky Hodgkin’s lymphoma. His mother wrote:

“He had lost so much weight, looked yellow and was not eating. He was out of breath and got tired so easily. They never considered cancer and even as sick as he was, neither did I”.

Alison had to physically beg the doctors to look at Jake, as they would not give him a face-to-face appointment because of covid. Jake had cancer all over his body but is now is cancer free. There you have it: no one thinks that it will happen to their child, and it is rare; so rare that GPs do not get enough training in childhood cancer. The campaign would like to raise awareness for parents to recognise the signs of cancer in the same way that we know about meningitis. I back this campaign to have a quicker diagnosis, so that better outcomes can be achieved. A national campaign on the signs and symptoms of childhood cancer will help, as well as better training for GPs and nurses, alongside more funding for research. I once again pay tribute to Sophie’s family and to all those who are working so hard to make sure that cancers are curable for all ages, but particularly children.