Local HIV/AIDS campaign goes international

A Canadian television producer has launched 20 short versions of South Africa's safe sex campaign, "The Three Amigos", featuring animated condoms called Dick, Shaft and Stretch, to help tackle HIV/AIDS globally. "Animation creates a kind of sense of disbelief, [so] it is much easier to get them accepted on national television," producer Firdaus Kharas told a news conference at the UN headquarters in New York. The video series has been made available in more than 40 foreign languages in the hope of getting them aired in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe and other parts of Africa. Kharas said he was particularly keen to reach young people between 15 and 25 years old in Latin America, Eastern Europe or Russia, China and India, as these areas were on the cusp of an epidemic.