Britain’s youngest ever victim of a killer cancer linked to asbestos has died after a heartbreaking five-year battle against the disease.

By Nick Sommerlad

Brave Sophie Ellis was just 13 when she was diagnosed with mesothelioma and given just months to live, but she defied the doctors’ predictions and fought the disease until her death at 18 surrounded by her family.

Despite being desperately ill, she spoke movingly about her ordeal last
year in support of the Mirror’s Asbestos Timebomb campaign and her startling story proved an inspiration.

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She told us: “The cancer has made me braver in a way. It was pretty tough being diagnosed at such a young age and the surgery was really painful. I hope more can be done to understand this disease – that’s why I’m backing the Mirror’s campaign.”

The talented musician and performer never gave up her dream of becoming an actress even after gruelling surgery to remove a lung and losing the use of her legs.

She regularly played with an amateur dramatics group and began studying performing arts at Suffolk College after her GCSEs, but was forced to give up her course because of the disease.

Nobody knows how Sophie, of Battisford in Suffolk, contracted the disease, which can take 15 to 50 years to develop and normally afflicts middle-aged or older victims with long-exposure to asbestos in building works and heavy industry.

The lethal cancer of the lung or the abdomen kills one person every five hours in Britain – the highest rate in the world. Since 1968 only nine people under the age of 19 have died of the disease.

Sophie was found to have the disese after she developed a sore side from what she thought was a judo injury, but tests found it was a tumour on the lining of her right lung.

She underwent eight months of chemotherapy and two weeks of radiotherapy at Addenbrookes’s Hospital in Cambridge. In April this year the cancer spread to her spine, leaving her paralysed from the neck down.

Her mother Lynn, 52, a former nurse, said:“She fought so hard and we are so grateful to have spent that extra time with her. We knew from the beginning that her illness was terminal, but nothing prepares you for when the end comes. She packed more into her 18 years than some people do in a lifetime.’‘

Last night veteran asbestos campaigner Michael Lees, whose teacher wife Gina died of disease in 2000 after exposure to asbestos in school, said: “I am desperately sorry to hear of the sad death of Sophie Ellis and my thoughts and prayers are with her family.

“Mesothelioma is an awful disease and it is especially tragic when someone so young with such a wonderful future in front of them dies from the cancer.”

Sophie, who has two brothers and a ten-year-old sister Lucy, died last week and left a video tape she made two years ago as a tribute of her life and battle with illness.