BAKU, September 8
Sevda Aliyeva, once celebrated as Best Model of the World and among Azerbaijan’s most recognized faces in international fashion, is now confronting the hardest fight of her life. The 2000s-era beauty queen has been diagnosed with stage IIIB HER2-positive breast cancer with metastases in her lymph nodes.
Aliyeva recalls that the first warning signs appeared in 2020, a year overshadowed not by COVID but by her son Arseniy’s serious illness. He was diagnosed with Marfan syndrome, a genetic condition affecting the heart, vision, and musculoskeletal system, Media.Az informs.
For months, she carried him between hospital beds and crutches, while he nevertheless excelled academically and musically, later winning admission to the Rimsky-Korsakov College of Music in St. Petersburg.
“The stress and sleepless nights broke my health,” she said. “When it became clear that nothing could fully cure my son, I told myself I would live only as long as he did.”
By late 2023, Aliyeva’s body began to fail: pulmonary embolism, infarct pneumonia, and finally the discovery of tumors during a lung exam. The cancer diagnosis was later confirmed. Added complications — ischemic heart disease and stage-three hypertension — made treatment even more difficult.
Though she secured access to chemotherapy in a private Moscow clinic through state insurance, coverage is partial. Enormous costs remain for drugs, travel, accommodation, food, rehabilitation, and care for other illnesses.
“All of this falls on my 19-year-old son, who is himself chronically ill,” Aliyeva explained. Despite his own health struggles, Arseniy has become the top student of his faculty, translates musicological literature, teaches solfeggio and piano, studies Arabic, performs in concerts, and still cares for his mother between his own rehabilitation sessions.
Aliyeva has no living parents, no close family to turn to, and lost her husband in a tragedy years ago. The burden now rests solely on her and her son, with support from a few friends.
Each trip for treatment costs about 100,000 rubles (roughly $1,100), and by late October she faces three more chemotherapy cycles, requiring around 300,000 rubles (≈ 6,240 AZN). Friends have launched a fundraising effort to help cover expenses.
