Muppet with HIV to be Sesame Street star

The cast of the South African edition of the Sesame Street children's television show will soon be joined by an HIV-positive muppet.

The new puppet will be a woman armed with high self-esteem, says Joel Schneider, a senior adviser to the Sesame Street Workshop, who made the announcement at the International Aids conference in Barcelona.

But Mr Schneider said the character's messages would not contain explicit references to sex. "What do I do when I cut my finger? What do I do when you cut your finger? That sort of thing," he said, adding that women were often stigmatised about HIV and that the aim was to provide a role model for nursery children who were the show's pre-school target audience.

The character will start life in South Africa, but will then be exported to some of the nine countries that broadcast the show.

South Africa's education department, which, together with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, is behind the initiative, says the goal of the show is to "inform and prevent new infections".

The initiative will help boost South Africa's Aids awareness programme, which is battling against widespread denial of and ignorance about the disease. About one in nine South Africans are infected with HIV.

The new muppet will join South Africa's Takalani Sesame show for its third season on September 30, although the broadcaster is giving away little else about the character.