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MOSCOW, Russia, Sept. 30, 2004 — PSI/Russia has launched the Be Faithful to Your Love campaign on its Vosmi S Soboi <www.vozmissoboi.ru> web site with the goal of raising awareness on the risks of sex and promoting healthy sexual habits, including mutual fidelity and condom use. The web site's growing popularity provides evidence that Russian youth are being reached with messages of healthy and responsible sexual behavior. "The number of Russian youth with access to the internet is growing exponentially and youth are turning to the web as a source for information on numerous fronts, including health. Appealing to young people with information in the entertaining setting of the internet is an effective way to reach them with targeted messages," says PSI/Russia Country Representative Nicola Morgan. A new feature to the Vosmi S Soboi web site, which receives support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, is a colorful and personalized electronic game to determine how many potential shared sexual partners a person might have had, and how many times they have been exposed to HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections (STI) directly or indirectly. The interactive game calculates the possible number of sexual partners and probability of infection risk by using a person's age, frequency of sexual activity and regularity of condom use. For example, take a 35-year-old male, who started having sex at 17. He's had an estimated 20 partners, three of whom were known virgins. His last partner was 25 years old. He uses condoms 75% of the time. According to the exposure calculator, he's had sex with 3,505 shared partners, out of which 522 could have exposed him to STIs. Visitors are asked to answer two multiple choice questions: "How is HIV transmitted?" and "What type of sex and drug use is most risky?" For those who answered correctly, another qualitative question followed: "Why do you think you should be faithful to your loved one?" The authors of the two most articulate and original answers won mountain bikes and three runners-up won rollerblades. "Any kind of relationship is built on trust and respect — respect
to your partner and yourself. If you have sex with someone else it is
the most obvious form of betrayal. Betraying your partner is betraying
yourself." Be Faithful to Your Love touched youth on a very personal level and the feedback from site users confirmed the value of the information. During the two-week campaign, Be Faithful to Your Love attracted 116,727 unique visitors. The game was played 12,138 times and 7,500 young people answered the questions. Additionally, over 400 questions were asked of Dr. Pertsev, the virtual doctor who gives answers about HIV/AIDS and STIs. PSI's two previous campaigns on <www.vozmissoboi.ru> were equally successful. The number of visitors during the It Depends on You campaign dedicated to World AIDS Day and held in the fall of 2003 reached 168,116 people and 156,554 young people took part in the St. Valentine's Day campaign in February 2004. An estimated 15 million Russians currently have internet access, or
just over 10% of the population - over seven times as many Russians
compared to 2000. By 2010, experts believe that 50 million Russians
will have internet access. Studies reveal that young Russians are much
more likely than older Russians to use the internet. During its campaigns,
PSI/Russia's Vosmi S Soboi website is the most population health-related
web site second only to the large portal <www.health.kulichki.net>.
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