Schoolgirls in Maidstone this week became the first in the area to be given a pioneering cancer jab.

About 170 girls aged 17-18, at Invicta Grammar School, in Huntsman Lane, Maidstone, had their first vaccinations on Wednesday to protect them from cervical cancer.

Eventually up to 7,000 girls across West Kent will receive the injection against two strains of the HPV virus.

The strains cause 74 per cent of cervical cancer cases.

Girls aged 12-13, in year eight, will be vaccinated later in the year.

The government announced a national immunisation programme earlier this year. The 12-13 and 17-18 age groups were selected nationally to be the first to get the Cervarix vaccine, which is being offered by the NHS for the first time.

Vaccines for girls aged 13 to 17 will be given over the next two years. Cervical cancer is the second commonest form of cancer in women worldwide, causing 400 deaths a year in the UK and five a year in west Kent.

Research shows the immunisation programme is 99 per cent effective at protecting against the two main strains of HPV in unaffected girls.

To offer complete protection girls should have three jabs.

The national vaccination programme has caused controversy in Scotland, where pupils were the first to get the jabs.

A Catholic school in Prestwich refused to allow 12 and 13 year-old girls to be vaccinated, because staff and governors did not believe school was the best place for the injections to be given.

And in England and Wales, many parents responding to a survey by the Department of Health, said they feared giving their young daughters the vaccine could make them more promiscuous.

But the NHS West Kent’s deputy director of public health, Dr Brendan O’Connor, said: “This is the first widely available vaccine to protect against cancer and is a real breakthrough. We will be vaccinating 6-7,000 girls over the next few months, depending on how quickly we can get into schools.”

The Primary Care Trust has been given extra money by the government for nursing and administrative staff.

Kim Stafford, Invicta Grammar’s assistant head teacher, added: “I think school is the best place to have the immunisation.

“We have a programme of vaccinations so it is nothing new to the pupils and they will all be in one place.”