Films on AIDS exempted from entertainment duty

The Maharashtra government has decided to exempt films made for spreading awareness about AIDS from 'entertainment duty'.

Addressing the 15th international AIDS conference in Bangkok, Thailand, on Tuesday, Maharashtra chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said: "The incidence of HIV infected pregnant women in Maharashtra is pegged at one per cent. In the high risk group (commercial sex workers), this incidence is found to be 10 per cent. Various government hospitals in the state are being equipped to treat AIDS patients. A corpus of Rs 19 crore is earmarked for this."

By providing proper medical assistance to pregnant women in the state, many AIDs affected women had delivered healthy babies, uninfected by the HIV Aids virus, Shinde said.

"Even the international community has lauded Maharashtra's efforts through the 'prevention of parent to child transmission programme' undertaken by the state in this regard," Shinde said.