Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - November 30, 2005
Meg Clothier

Some were scared to drink from the same glass as her, others worried what would happen if she scratched them. Everyone wanted to know why she wasn't keeping something so dreadful a secret.

"For Russians HIV is fear, it's death. People cannot understand why I am open about it," said Svetlana, who on World AIDS Day on Thursday will be crowned the winner of Russia's first 'Miss Positive' beauty contest.

Svetlana was diagnosed with HIV in 2002 after a seaside love affair. She spent her March 8 holiday -- normally a big day for women in Russia when male family and friends shower them with flowers and attention -- crying in her bedroom.

"I wanted to die," she told Reuters in an interview. "The doctors said I'd live for eight years. But they behaved like I was already a corpse."

Now aged 24, confident and stylishly dressed, she is determined to show she has nothing to hide.

"People see I'm healthy, beautiful, cheerful. They see that I'm always smiling and all their stereotypes just completely fall apart," said Svetlana, who comes from the Chuvash Republic, a region of Russia some 12 hours train ride east of Moscow.

She takes no special medication, apart from lots of vitamins. She swims and runs and avoids stress.

NORMAL PEOPLE, SCARY PEOPLE

Unlike in Western Europe and North America where AIDS was initially stigmatised as a 'gay disease', in Russia people mainly associate it with drug addicts and prostitutes.

"The attitude in Russia is that 'normal' people don't get it," said Svetlana, who works as a hairdresser.

"I've asked children at schools what people with HIV are like and they say, 'Er ... well they're those scary, homeless people who lie around on the streets.' And you can imagine what adults are saying if children talk like that."

Although the number of Russians with HIV is a fraction of what it is in sub-Saharan Africa, the rate at which it is spreading is one of the fastest in the world.

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

And more and more it is the so-called 'normal' people who are at risk. In Moscow in 2000, drug use caused over 80 percent of infections and heterosexual sex just 10 percent. By 2004 the proportions were nearly half and half.

The state does not always help, say AIDS workers who were horrified by a Moscow government-sponsored campaign with the message: "There's no such thing as safe sex".

One slogan advised that: "For just a minute of dubious pleasure you could lose everything -- your health, your future, and the people you love" -- condemned in a letter signed by dozens of activists as offensive to people with HIV.

But at least in 2006 there will be a lot more money -- some $175 million compared with less than $5 million this year. And President Vladimir Putin has promised to put AIDS high on the agenda when G8 leaders meet in Russia next year.

Meanwhile, Svetlana is preparing to face the newspaper reporters and television cameras on Thursday -- but the prize-giving itself will happen behind closed doors because some of the other contestants are afraid of the publicity.

Svetlana remains an exception.

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