http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/11/28/hivcontest.shtml

Russia is holding a beauty contest for HIV-positive girls this year, Russia’s chief sanitary official Gennady Onishchennko told Interfax Monday.

The contest, called “Miss Positive-2005”, is scheduled for Dec. 1, World AIDS Day.

“It sounds absurd, someone may say this idea is offensive, but why not hold this beauty contest among HIV-positive girls,” Onishchenko said at a press conference.

“With this small action we are trying to change the general public’s attitude. Why can’t these people live like ordinary people do? They can and they should, in any society. Just like people live with hepatitis B and other diseases,” he added.

Independent experts say there are between 800,000 and one million HIV-infected people in Russia. More than 100 new cases of HIV/AIDS are reported in Russia every day. In 2004, 37,336 new cases of the disease were reported in Russia.

80 percent of people with HIV in Russia are under 30.

Beyond the appalling number of HIV positive people I believe this is at least one beauty contest wherein there WONT be any sexual harrassment by the judges.

And let it be one more warning to those of you out there still going into battle unprotected. 80 percent of these kids are under 30 and they've earned a death sentence.

silly thing! isnt it?

i guess..

Originally Posted by phoenix80

silly thing! isnt it?

The contest? Maybe, the disease? definitely not!

A Russian woman has received an award as winner of Russia’s first beauty pageant for women living HIV, intended to combat stigma in the country with Europe’s highest infection rate, AFP reported Thursday.

“Svetlana Izambayeva is the winner of the ”Miss Positive“ competition, said Ekaterina Militskaya, an AIDS advocate from the East-West AIDS Foundation who is involved in organising the award ceremony.

But ”Svetlana is the only of the winners to agree to meet with the press,“ Militskaya added, saying two other women — Ekaterina from Orenburg and Sofia from Moscow — would not attend the ceremony and refused to give their surnames.

The award is timed to coincide with World Aids Day on Thursday.

Izambayeva, 24, is a single woman from the central city of Cheboksary who works as a hairdresser and is studying at a local agricultural academy, organizers said, adding that she was not a drug user. Svetlana was diagnosed with HIV in 2002 after a seaside love affair.

Stigma associated with HIV in Russia is still strong and the level of information about the disease among the Russian public is low, though official attention to the problem of high infection rates is increasing.

Dozens of competition participants sent photographs to a magazine called Steps for people living with HIV, which were published on a website and then voted on by visitors to the site.

”It was a revolutionary step for HIV-positive people in Russia... In society as a whole there is fear of people with HIV, of infection, and they wanted to show they are the same people as us,“ Militskaya said of the beauty pageant.

The proportion of Russians with HIV has nearly doubled to 231 per 100, 000 from 121 per 100, 000 in 2001, Reuters added.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/12/...positive.shtml

Click on the link boys and take a look at what HIV looks like and remember it. Even the most beautiful woman can kill you without even trying if you step off unprotected.

It's tough growing up in the world today. She's a pretty girl and too young to be facing such a future.