Russian HIV-positive girls to compete for beauty queen title at special pageant

As of today, 7,611 people have already died of AIDS in Russia

On the eve of the World AIDS Day on December 1, Russia will organize Miss Positive 2005, the beauty contest held among HIV-positive girls. Russia's Surgeon General Gennady Onischenko told Interfax that some people may believe the idea to have such a contest is absurd and even humiliating. “But why not holding a beauty contest among HIV-positive girls?” he added. According to the official, the main goal of the contest is to make other people see that HIV-infected individuals also have the right to live a normal life. They can and must live in any society like many patients suffering from hepatitis B and other serious diseases, Gennady Onischenko believes.

Many public actions are to be organized in several regions of Russia dedicated to the World AIDS Day. The number of HIV-positive people is steadily increasing in Russia, and 80 percent of them are people of the age between 15 and 30. Every day about 100 people get HIV-infected in Russia. At that, 70 percent of HIV-positive people got infected after using injection drugs. As of today, 7,611 people have already died of AIDS in Russia.

Russian Surgeon General Gennady Onischenko is known for his extraordinary ideas he sometimes suggests. For instance, he says Russia would have extirpated prostitution when pimps who sell women's love for money “are hung for their tender organs on trees until they realize the immensity of the evil they do.” He believes the measure would be effective in fighting prostitution.

Against the background of people's fears as concerning avian flu, Gennady Onischenko once said he was ready to take a chicken hit with avian flu, cook and eat ir in public to prove that the avian flu virus is destroyed at high temperatures. But later the official said he was joking and refused to eat an infected chicken when some journalist alleged he had a chicken infected with avian flu, Newsru reports.

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