18 year old, Tryphena Natukunda , was crowned the beauty Queen in the third annual Uganda Network of Young People Living with HIV beauty pageant at Golf Course Hotel Kampala, Uganda on Saturday reports Ap.
The young Ugandan living with HIV/ Aids has fought stigmatization and harsh judgement by keeping her condition secret from relatives and friends under the advice of her mother.
Natukunda has longed to live freely and that’s why she competed against none other beauties in the competition that seeks to inform people of the dangers of discriminating against people living with HIV/AIDs
A majority of people in Uganda see HIV diagnosis as proof of irresponsible sexual behaviour and a source of shame.
“In Uganda, many young people die not because they do not take their medicine. It’s just because the stigma and discrimination around them hindered them from taking their medicine well,” Lovinka Nakayiza of the Uganda Network of Young people Living with HIV & AIDS, the civic group which put on the pageant, said
The pageant winner is expected to become a traveling ambassador in the fight against AIDS. Instead of physical attributes or special talents, contestants were judged on their knowledge of HIV, including basic questions such as the term for which HIV serves as an acronym.
The organizers of the HIV-themed beauty pageant, which launched in 2014, say one way of curbing the irrational fear of AIDS that fuels discrimination is for more people living with HIV to open up about their status rather than conceal it.
