BBC anchor Maryam Moshiri reveals incurable blood cancer — SkimNews
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- Maryam Moshiri, one of the BBC News channel's best-known anchors, revealed she was diagnosed in November 2024 with polycythaemia vera (PV), a rare blood cancer in which the body produces too many red blood cells, thickening the blood and raising the risk of clots, stroke, heart attack, or DVT.
- Moshiri initially underwent seven or eight hour-long venesections over about five months to thin her blood, a regimen that wiped out her iron levels, left her losing her hair and intensely itchy, and produced what she described as a fatigue 'like someone has removed your battery completely.'
- Moshiri later began interferon immunotherapy through the NHS, and after dose adjustments now needs only one venesection in roughly 15 months, saying the last two months have been better than any point in the previous two years.
- Moshiri said her cancer was caught only because her GP was unusually thorough with routine blood tests, since she had mostly no symptoms — a pattern Blood Cancer UK chief executive Helen Rowntree called the 'silent' nature of the disease, which is the UK's fifth most common cancer and third biggest cancer killer.
- Moshiri continued anchoring major global stories throughout treatment, including broadcasting from Qatar at the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, the new Pope's selection at the Vatican, and Vice-President JD Vance's visit to Greenland, crediting her husband Jonathan and her three children for supporting her through it.
Why it matters: For two years Moshiri anchored some of the BBC's biggest international stories while privately managing weekly treatments and an exhaustion severe enough to keep her from playing with her three children. Her case concretely illustrates two things the source flags: PV is routinely caught only by incidental blood work, and access to NHS immunotherapy — not a cure — is what kept her on air rather than sidelined.
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