You may have read in the Daily Mail about the girl who died not long after being given the HPV vaccine. The usual scaremongering ensued. However, it is now clear that Natalie Morton did NOT die due to the HPV vaccine.

Even if she had, she would be the less-than-one-complication-in-a-million that the vaccine is estimated to cause; no medical intervention is perfectly safe and a complete immunization campaign in the UK will inevitably lead to some girls dying due to an adverse reaction against the vaccine. However, the risk of not being vaccinated is considerably larger.

Here are some numbers:

Number of girls vaccinated in 10 years: 3.5 million (approx)
Deaths due to vaccination: 1 in 10 years
Lives estimated saved: 4000 in 10 years

Risk of dying due to vaccination: 0.00028 in 1000
Chance of vaccination saving your life: 1.15 in 1000

Take the vaccine, if you're the age for it. If you have kids of the right age, make sure they're vaccinated.

(Fight the scaremongering. Pass this on.)