Andy Burnham: Why my wife found double mastectomy liberating

ANDY BURNHAM spoke movingly today about his wife's decision to have a double mastectomy in a bid to beat breast cancer.

The shadow health secretary said 40-year-old Marie-France had the operation after her sisters and mother found they had the illness.

Mr Burnham said that the NHS operation, taken after his wife found out she was carrying a mutated gene, had brought relief to the couple.

"As hard as it was to take, the decision was liberating rather than depressing because it's lifted the cloud of fear," he told the Daily Mirror. "She did what she did because she'd seen the devastation breast cancer had caused to her sisters and mother. We more than most know what could have happened and we had to find a way to get beyond it."

The Labour leadership contender said that when his sister-in-law Claire died of breast cancer in 2006 she was only 38 and left four children under eight. "While my mother-in-law Bea was looking after Claire, she missed her own screening appointments and she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Then we found out my wife's other sister, Louise, had the same cancer," he said.

Every year, 46,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer and up to 10 per cent have an inherited genetic condition.