HOLLYOAKS star Carley Stenson is encouraging teenage girls to protect themselves against cervical cancer with a controversial vaccine.

Carley, from Wigan, who plays Steph Cunningham in the Channel 4 soap, wants all girls of 12 and 13 to have the three vaccines against HPC virus, which can lead to the disease.

She is launching the Arm Against Cervical Cancer campaign to back the vaccine - which made headlines last month when governors at St Monica's High, in Bury, refused to allow their pupils to have it on their premises.

Carley, 26, said: "Cervical cancer kills three women a day in England and it is the second most common cancer in women under the age of 35. The Arm Against Cervical Cancer campaign will encourage all Year Eight girls to be immunised to help protect them later in life."

Carley will help bosses from Ashton, Leigh and Wigan primary care trust chose three girls who have had all three jabs this year to front next year's poster campaign for Arm Against Cervical Cancer.

Martin Brown, chairman of governors at 1,200-pupil St Monica's, had said the school `does not believe that it is the right place for the injections to be administered'. Health officials condemned the decision.