World Health and Entertainment:
The BBC has an article about the South African version of Sesame Street has recently introduced an HIV positive puppet. South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world. According to the article, either 1 in 9 or 1 in 5 South Africans has HIV (the author used both statistics, so I’m not sure which is correct) and there is a great need to introduce tolerance within society. From the article: “The idea is to teach children that people can live normal lives with HIV.”
Update: I emailed the BBC about the discrepancy between the 1 in 9 and the 1 in 5 statistic and they have revised the article removing the 1 in 5 statistic. I’m not sure that they changed the article in response to my comment or somebody else’s comment (since they did not respond directly to me), but its nice to see that they corrected the error.
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October 7, 2002 @ 7:01 pm
When I tried to access the BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2264256.stm it wasn’t working, so took a copy of the cache from Google and here it is-
By Alastair Leithead
BBC, Cape Town
The South African version of the children’s educational programme Sesame Street has introduced an HIV positive character.
The programme, aimed at very young children, wants to show that those living with HIV are no different to others and should be treated as such.
About one in nine South Africans have the virus, with thousands of children having become orphans because of the Aids epidemic.
The provision of drugs to treat the disease has become a controversial political issue, with Aids campaigners taking legal action to force the government to provide anti-retroviral drugs.
Living with HIV
The name of the latest addition to Takalani Sesame is Kami. She is five, she likes playing, reading and telling stories.
The character has been introduced to the programme with the HIV infection rate on the increase.
The idea is to teach children that people can live normal lives with HIV.
Gloria Britain, the project manager for the new character, says: “There are so many young children in South Africa who face the issues of being affected and infected by HIV/Aids on a daily basis and the last thing we want to do as responsible adults and responsible organisations in South Africa is to bury our heads in the sand.
“We’ve got to help children to understand the real world that they live in on a daily basis.”
Sesame Street has different educational storylines around the world, to reflect issues affecting children in specific countries.
By getting young children used to the idea of having an HIV positive friend around it is hoped the stigma associated with the virus in South Africa can be removed.
End
Hope it’s alright to post it like this.