A REVOLUTIONARY anti-cancer drug that has been given to girls aged 12 and 13 in Jersey is safe, a senior Island Health official said following reports in the UK of serious side-effects.

Dr Linda Diggle spoke out in defence of Cervarix following national media coverage which quoted campaigners calling for the drug’s use to be suspended. She said that a small number of Jersey schoolgirls had experienced possible side-effects, but she added that they had been minor.

‘Despite adverse publicity in one national newspaper, the cervical cancer vaccine has been well received in Jersey and there have been no significant adverse events among the girls who have been vaccinated,’ said Dr Diggle, the head of health care programmes and the person in charge of immunisation.

Those ‘events’ include redness, swelling, tiredness and diarrhoea. Dr Diggle also warned of the dangers of irresponsible reporting and pointed to the now discredited claims that the MMR vaccination caused autism. She said that as a result of ‘unfounded scaremongering’, a worrying number of children in the UK had contracted both mumps and measles.

Pictured: Dr Linda Diggle: ‘There have been no significant adverse events among the girls who have been vaccinated’