FEARS over the safety of a cancer jab saw it dramatically scrapped, minutes before it was due to be given to hundreds of the region’s pupils yesterday.

The Daily Post can reveal health officials took the radical step to pull the plug on planned Cervarix jabs to teenage girls in Knowsley, Halton and St Helens.

The move came a day after the death of 14-year-old Coventry school girl Natalie Morton who died in hospital after receiving the HPV1 Cervarix jab at school.

It has since emerged she had a “serious underlying medical condition”.

Primary Care Trust officials in Knowsley temporarily imposed a jab ban so officials could “quarantine” stocks of the Cervarix vaccine – found to be from the same batch used for the Coventry school.

They contacted a borough school yesterday to ask a planned round of the injections the same morning be called off.

The school, which officials refused to name, was told not to do the injections in what a Knowsley Health and Well-being spokesman said was a “precautionary measure” following advice from the government’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson.

But vaccinations continued as normal in Liverpool, Wirral and Sefton with experts stressing the jab did not pose a risk to health. The Knowsley batch will remain quarantined until the incident has been fully investigated but a spokeswoman stressed the vaccination programme “will continue as usual” today using stocks of the HPV vaccine from different batches.