Caribbean

I'm on my second day in Georgetown. Remarkable city; a national capital dominated by two story, peaked-roof wooden houses, many with ornate gingerbread trimming (the influence of Dutch and British colonialists), but up on stilts. Cars, trucks, scooters and the odd horse-drawn carriage clog the streets. The shops you pass range from internet cafes and cellular phone stores to stores selling mining equipment. Children play on open fields in the city center while cows and horses graze nearby. The clash of epochs here is disorienting.

In a society like Jamaica, any talk about HIV/AIDS is going to be about secrets, about taboos, and about the private lives of people.

There are two Jamaicas.

Tourists see the north coast country—its all-inclusive hotels, sunny beaches, and high-end restaurants—and a few fleeting glimpses of what most believe is the worst privation they have ever witnessed. They see half-naked children, zinc-roofed homes, hustled trinkets, and they think poverty. They think they are seeing the other Jamaica, but they are not.

A synthesis of video, photographs, poetry and music, all inspired by Kwame's reporting in Jamaica, can be found on the Emmy award-winning interactive site: www.livehopelove.com

As featured on "Foreign Exchange with Daljit Dhaliwal." A News and Politics editor's pick on YouTube, this video began airing on March 28, 2008.

Stigma and discrimination are fueling the HIV epidemic in the Caribbean. In Jamaica, those living with HIV often face social isolation and harassment.

As featured on "Foreign Exchange with Daljit Dhaliwal." Once a poster child for living HIV+ in Jamaica, Annesha Taylor knows firsthand that life after a positive diagnosis is not an easy one. The campaigns showing that there is life after a positive diagnosis are right — HIV is not a death sentence. But strong stigma and the difficulties of juggling family life, the batteries of medication and bouts of depression have left Annesha fighting to survive.

"Sex Workers Confront HIV" aired on Foreign Exchange the week of January 24, 2008.

Watch the video on the Heroes of HIV interactive website.

Past air dates: week of November 8, 2007

Antigone Barton was interviewed on South Florida's local PBS station, WPBT Channel 2.

Watch the interview on the Heroes of HIV interactive website.

Watch the video on the Heroes of HIV interactive website.

It was 1982 when Dr. Jean Malecki examined a dying 9-month-old baby and made the first pediatric AIDS diagnosis in Palm Beach County.

The parents, who had arrived recently from the Caribbean, were sick, too.

"Within six months, the child had died," Malecki said. "The whole family got wiped out by the disease."

Malecki states this flatly because in the past 25 years, the Palm Beach County health director says, she has seen that flinching from the truth accomplishes nothing.

Australia's needle exchange program aims to prevent injecting drug users from sharing dirty needles.

This video takes you inside the walls of one of the worst prisons in the Western hemisphere. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and a general lack of funding in Haiti's National Penitentiary have led to exorbitant HIV and Tuberculosis rates. Reporter Antigone Barton and videographer Stephen Sapienza take a first-hand look at these conditions and an American doctor working to correct them. After this video was taken, USAID authorized $200,000 in emergency funding for health and sanitation improvements.

Aired on Foreign Exchange November 2007.

These are good times in this embattled capital.

Kidnappings are down and trash is picked up.

Brightly-painted trucks that serve as buses drive through bustling streets where vendors supply cheap wares and workers repair ancient machines with obsolete tools.

United Nations trucks patrol the streets, too, but after years of outside intervention, the people of this impoverished republic are running their own government.