Heath Ledger's father sets up charity to tackle prescription drug abuse

Heath Ledger's father has set up a prescription drug abuse charity to help save others from the same fate as his son.

The Dark Knight star was just 28 years old when he died from an accidental prescription drug overdose in 2008, and his dad Kim Ledger is campaigning for better education about potentially dangerous medicines.

Ledger also wants to change laws to make sure doctors in the actor's native Australia are more careful with prescriptions, especially with celebrity clients, and he has set up a foundation called Scriptwise to help.

He tells Australia's ABC news, "People with higher profiles probably get questioned less, whatever you want you can have. But it is as simple as right now there is not system to catch it. So you can literally go from one doctor to the next in Australia and build up an armoury of pills. When they first put the system together in New York, I think it was the first day they found 200 doctor shoppers."