There can be little worse than your child falling seriously ill, but when there's a suspicion that their illness is the result of them being given medication that was designed to protect their health, I can only imagine the sense of anger, frustration and responsibility you'd feel as a parent. Ahead of my children having their MMR jabs, there'd been a lot said in the media about the possible side effects and links to autism. We read all the literature, listened to the doctors and weighed up the potential risks of them having it and not having it. In the end, we put our faith in the vast majority of medical experts who said it was safe and went ahead with it to no ill-effect.
If you currently have daughters around the age of 12, you may well be having similar concerns about them being vaccinated against HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer. Our top story tonight is that of 13-year-old Rebecca Ramagge, from Reigate, who's now in a wheelchair after having three injections of the Cervarix vaccine. As you've probably seen in the papers today, 14-year-old Natalie Morton from Coventry died shortly after she received the jab at school yesterday. Medical experts are keen to stress the validity of mass-vaccination programmes and rightly point out that the number of cases of severe side effects is incredibly small. Still, questions about the safety of Cervarix remain. Other, more expensive vaccines are available and indeed preferred in other countries. We'll bring you Rebecca's story, ask how safe Cervarix is and put your concerns to medical experts.
Now, if you got to open your post while you nibbled on your toast and marmalade this morning, you were one of the very lucky ones. London's postal services ground to a halt on the 14th day of strike action this year. Ninety nine per cent of workers were not at work today and not a single sorting office was open (according to union leaders) while the pile of undelivered mail simply gets bigger and bigger. Glen Goodman's all over this story and will keeps us...well...posted...at six.
On the lighter side - a 15-year-old girl from London is being tipped for stardom at the 2012 Olympics. At 5 foot 3 and petite, you'd think Zoe Smith would be a gymnast. But no, Zoe is a weightlifter and a very good one, already able to lift three times her own body weight, which sounds a lot to me?! She set nearly a hundred British records last year and won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Youth Games in India. She was voted 'Athlete of the Year' by the British Olympic Association - a title normally reserved for the likes of Sir Chris Hoy and Andy Murray. Nothing like piling the pressure on our young hopefuls, eh?! Luckily she seems to have her feet on the ground. Sally Rourke will have more on Zoe's uplifting story...sorry!
Matt and Katie.
