MU 2018 Catriona Gray promotes HIV awareness by taking on 10-year challenge

FILE: “Am crazy grateful to work with an amazing team today for an upcoming project!” (Photo: @catriona_gray/Instagram)

Miss Universe 2018 Catriona Gray from the Philippines uses the viral ‘10-year challenge’ to voice out her own advocacy calling for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing.

On her Instagram, where she has 4.

5 million followers, Catriona posts a graphic on how the epidemic has spread in the last ten years. She captions, “Hey Philippines, here’s a #10yearchallenge,” tagging her partner organization Love Yourself Philippines. Catriona continues to describe, “In the last ten years, we’ve seen the cases of new HIV cases in the Philippines rise exponentially from only 1 a day in 2008 to 32 a day in 2018.

While the numbers appear alarming, the data shows us that we’ve been able to reach the affected population and increase the access to testing, which is a key step to stop the rising epidemic. To accelerate our vision to eradicate HIV, it starts with educating ourselves and then taking steps to get tested and to continue to take steps to care for ourselves.” In conclusion, the 24-year-old beauty queen adds, “If I can do it, you can too.”

Last November, Catriona also released a video in partnership with Love Yourself Philippines entitled, “This is me: Brave and Free with Love Yourself Philippines,” where she shows the process of getting tested for the disease. Love Yourself Philippines is an organization that focuses on awareness, education, counselling, and testing of HIV.

Prior to her post pertaining to HIV, Catriona also shared the evolution of her famous ‘lava walk’ in her stories, as well as ‘Baby face Cat’ at age 14.

Catriona was crowned Miss Universe Philippines 2018 in Thailand last December, becoming the fourth winner from the country after 1969’s Gloria Diaz, 1973’s Margie Moran, and 2015’s Pia Wurtzbach. She currently resides in New York to fulfill her duties.