Andrea Downer, Freelance Writer

Twenty-two-year-old Tracy-Ann Wisdom was born three years after the first case of AIDS was diagnosed in Jamaica. She is yet to meet anyone face to face who is living with the disease.

However, she was able to write a convincing article about the issue and her work was voted the best of three pieces written on the topic, to earn the inaugural Panos Caribbean/ Gleaner Internship on HIV and AIDS. A second-year print journalism student at the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC), University of the West Indies, Mona, Wisdom was selected for the internship at The Gleaner newspaper.

Patricia Watson, regional director of HIV/AIDS at Panos Caribbean, says the goal of the internship is to encourage coverage of health, socio-economic and cultural implications of HIV and AIDS on Jamaica and the Caribbean region.

"The media play an important role in promoting public awareness and holding decision makers to account in the HIV response. While there has been a significant increase in the number of articles on HIV in the media, we have recognised that too many are generally poor, highly reactionary and lacking depth. This internship is just one of the ways in which we are trying to improve upon this. And what better place to start than at the institutions from which journalists come," Watson states.

Wisdom says she is looking forward to her internship.

"I welcome the opportunity to learn more about the world of journalism that I have chosen to get involved in, as well as the opportunity to really focus on a serious issue that is affecting our country and learn more about it (in the process)."

Course requirement

Her internship, which will fulfil part of her course requirement at the UWI, will span 12 weeks, 10 of which will be spent at The Gleaner reporting on HIV and related issues. She will begin her internship tomorrowat the Panos Caribbean office in St. Andrew, where she will spend one week, after which she will move on to the Behaviour Change Communication Unit of the Ministry of Health for another week. The remaining 10 weeks will be spent at The Gleaner's Montego Bay and Kingston offices.

The internship was open to print journalism students at CARIMAC and Northern Caribbean University.

Corinne Barnes, lecturer at CARIMAC, says she is very excited about the collaboration with Panos Caribbean and The Gleaner, and hopes that the initiative will continue beyond this year.

"HIV and AIDS are not very popular topics, so when Panos approached me, I thought it was a fantastic idea. Just getting students to think through issues relating to HIV and AIDS and health in general, is a challenge, as it is not something that comes readily to them," she says.

Wisdom hopes that her coverage of HIV and AIDS issues over the 10 weeks of her internship will help to bring more attention to the challenges that people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS face. "I want people to realise that they are normal people, who just happen to have a disease, which is unfortunate."

This article was commissioned by Panos Caribbean in collab-oration with The Gleaner.