Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Kamal Hassan's take on HIV/AIDS

Kamal Hassan says he is finding "a new reason to get involved every other day" in the campaign to stop HIV, especially after the success of the Heroes Project in which he participated with iconic campaigner and actor Richard Gere. Everyone is familiar with the range of health issues that Kamal has brought to the screen (addiction and psychosis) and practised off-screen (campaigns for organ donation).

He is now discovering that HIV/AIDS calls for not mere intellectual involvement but a great deal of emotional support. Some of that feeling came to the fore when he met two small girls who were HIV positive during the Hyderabad event in which he and Richard Gere lent their support to people living with HIV/AIDS: one of the girls had a name that struck a strong personal chord.

Here is his take on issues: be safe about whatever you are doing, including sex, demand forcefully that cheap drugs be made available to those who need it and persuade the moral police to stop making impractical appeals.

Would the film industry come to the aid of a star who declares that he is HIV positive? "Certainly we will do everything we can to support that person," he says.

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