Childhood Cancer Outcomes

Jill Mortimer Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jill Mortimer (Hartlepool) (Con)]

Sadly, I too know the devastating effect that childhood cancer has on families. My cousin Rebecca died, aged four, after an agonising battle with leukaemia. In those days, the treatment options for leukaemia were in their very early stages and Becky was one of the first children to undergo experimental radiation therapy. The side-effects of that early treatment are too gruesome to share with the House. Although survival rates for childhood cancer are better now than they were in the early ’70s, the side-effects wrought on children by radiation treatments and chemotherapy 50 years on remain agonising, as we have heard from across the House today. That is why more research is desperately needed.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) for securing this important debate. She spoke about Sophie Fairall and why it is so important that we make the simple changes that Sophie wanted to make hospital stays more bearable. She also spoke about how important it is that health professionals are able to detect childhood cancer early and that symptoms are not dismissed as something less severe. That is another vital reason why we must all work hard in this place to ensure that GPs start seeing more patients face to face again instead of telephone triaging, which has become all too prevalent through and beyond covid.

Sophie, like my cousin Becky, was a brave and strong little girl. They both should have grown into powerful, beautiful and amazing women. We should honour their legacy by taking bold measures in this House to improve treatments and outcomes for children suffering with cancer. One of my constituents, Amy, recently wrote to me about her daughter Isabellah. Isabellah was diagnosed with the same form of rare cancer as Sophie and Ebony, about whom my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) spoke so eloquently. Recently, Isabellah was one of the lucky ones: she received the brilliant news that she was no longer showing any sign of the disease. I pay tribute to the bravery of Isabellah and her mother Amy, who continues to fight to raise awareness of this terrible disease.

Although child cancer is often described as rare, the death of four children per week is four children too many. For Becky, Sophie, Ebony, Isabellah and countless other children, let us work together to beat child cancer and ensure that no family has to endure the ripples of loss that permeate through the years through too many families like ours.