Stephen Sutton, inspirational cancer charity fund-raiser, dies in his sleep

London: Teenager Stephen Sutton, who raised more than £3.2m (Dh19.7m) for the Teenage Cancer Trust, has died in hospital.

Announcing his death, his mother Jane said: “My heart is bursting with pride but breaking with pain for my courageous, selfless, inspirational son.”

In a statement posted on the Stephen’s Story Facebook page, the 19-year-old’s family said he had passed away peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

David Cameron tweeted his condolences, writing: “I’m deeply saddened to hear that Stephen Sutton has died. His spirit, bravery and fund-raising for cancer research were all an inspiration.”

Sutton’s story was propelled to national prominence by his use of social media to promote his fund-raising. As well as a JustGiving donations page he had a website and a Facebook page, along with a Twitter feed, YouTube channel and Tumblr and Instagram pages.

These reached new audiences when Sutton believed he was near death and, in typical non-self-pitying style, posted an update of himself lying in a hospital bed with his thumb up, and the message: “I’ve done well to blag things as well as I have up till now, but unfortunately I think this is just one hurdle too far.”

Two days later he was back to explain that the collapsed lung had not killed him after all.

The publicity prompted dozens of celebrities including Russell Brand, Sir Chris Hoy, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Adlington and varied footballers to endorse his campaign, tweeting photos holding written signs giving details of how to donate, along with a raised thumb and the #ThumbsUpForStephen tag.

Many thousands of readers were captivated by his attitude and donated money, also leaving vast numbers of support messages on his Facebook page.

The teenager was by now a national figure of inspiration, complete with an online petition for him to receive a last-minute knighthood.

While Sutton had, for the most part, communicated through social media during the final phase of his treatment, he gave a newspaper interview between hospital stays to discuss how his condition had given his astonishing fund-raising activities such focus and ambition.

The teenager told the Daily Mail that being so close to death was “scary, but at the same time incredibly reinvigorating”.

He said: “I am so lucky and so fortunate to be here. My cancer has taught me a lot about life. All the clichés not taking life for granted, blah, blah, blah. But being so close to death just reinforced all those feelings about making the most of what we’ve got.”

The idea of raising money, he explained, came when he was told his initial bowel cancer had spread to his pelvis and lymph nodes and was now incurable, with his demise inevitable but impossible to predict in terms of time.

He told the paper: “That’s when I stopped measuring life in terms of time and started measuring it in terms of what I could actually do.”

It was this attitude that captured the public imagination and helped Sutton’s fund-raising page reach £3.25m even before his death.

The money will go to the Teenage Cancer Trust, the relatively small charity Sutton said had helped him cope with his diagnosis, not least by putting him in contact with others in similar situations.

The charity has said the money will completely change the way it works, allowing it to greatly expand its activities.

The teenager’s early death was arguably brought about in part by serious misdiagnoses.

Sutton told the Daily Mail he had some residual and understandable anger towards the doctors who meant he missed out on early treatment.

He said: “There always will be anger. If it had been caught earlier it could have led to a better prognosis. It could have changed the situation. But even saying that, I’m not one to dwell on the past. It is what it is.”

Kate Collins, director of fund-raising for the Teenage Cancer Trust, which runs 27 specialist medical units around Britain as well as offering family support and health education, said his efforts had already dwarfed any previous donations, the biggest of which was a £1m bequest in a will.

“There’s not previously been anything of this size or scale,” she told the Guardian last month.

“If you look at the JustGiving page people are donating what they can £2.50 or £5 or £10 and they’re apologising, saying: ‘I’m sorry it can’t be more.’ It’s profoundly touching and enormously humbling for us. When I start thinking about nearly 200,000 individual donations it’s a huge spread of the message. It’s the sort of reach that charities who are much bigger than us would have to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns to achieve.”