Will help so many others...’
COUNTY CANCER CHARITY JOINS TRIBUTES TO DAME DEBORAH
DAME Deborah James showed the nation an “inner light” as she lived through cancer, local charity Hope Against Cancer has said.
The journalist and campaigner died of bowel cancer on Tuesday.
Her death was announced via a social media post shared by her family, who have since received an outpouring of love from across the country.
After being diagnosed with stage four cancer in 2016, Deborah worked to raise awareness of the illness, break taboos around symptoms and raise millions for cancer research.
A spokesman for Hope Against Cancer, a Leicester charity that supports research, said: “We’re tremendously saddened by Dame Deborah’s passing.
“But, doing what we do, we recognise fully the positives of how she used her illness to do so much lasting good for others by bringing bowel cancer into public discussion.
“We know from experience that public awareness is the essence of progress towards fighting and, ultimately, eliminating, all forms of cancer.
“Awareness primes funding, funding fuels research, research leads to prolonged and better lives for sufferers.
“We know from over 20 years of involvement that so many cancer sufferers show the same resilience and amazing ‘inner light’ that the whole nation has seen in Dame Deborah.
“Our own founder was one such person and this is what motivates us to do what we have been doing – with considerable success – for all this time for the people of Leicestershire and Rutland, through funding research projects with Leicester University and Leicester hospitals and funding our Hope Cancer Trials Centre.
“So our attitude to Dame Deborah’s passing is very much to celebrate her, and to appreciate what her legacy will do for so many others.”
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were among those to pay tribute yesterday.
They said: “We are so sad to hear the heartbreaking news about Dame
Deborah. Our thoughts are with her children, her family and her loved ones.
“Deborah was an inspirational and unfalteringly brave woman whose legacy will live on.”
BBC TV presenter George Alagiah, who was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer in 2014, said Dame Deborah was “a beacon, lighting the way for us all of us living with cancer”.
Dame Deborah died on Tuesday after spending her final weeks receiving end-of-life care at home with her husband, Sebastien, and their two children.
In her final weeks, Dame Deborah – a presenter of the BBC podcast You, Me And The Big C – raised almost £7 million for research and was made a dame for her work improving awareness of the disease.
In a final message from Deborah, after announcing her death on Tuesday, her family wrote on social media: “And a few final things from Deborah… ‘find a life worth enjoying; take risks; love deeply; have no regrets; and always, always have rebellious hope. And finally, check your poo – it could just save your life.’”