Suzette Moses-Burton during the [RED] campaign in 2008.

Suzette Moses-Burton, HIV/AIDS Programme Manager has been named Person of the Year for 2008 by both daily newspapers on St. Maarten, namely TODAY and The Daily Herald.

According to the TODAY they chose Moses-Burton as Person of the Year, because she had built a career around a theme that has brought many people on the island together for a common goal.

The Daily Herald on the other hand named Moses-Burton as Person of the Year based on the fact that she is no stranger  to the fight against HIV/AIDS in St. Maarten and the region, especially with the launch in 2008 of the successful Talk [RED] Campaign, an educational initiative that The Daily Herald stated became red hot.

The four year long [RED] Campaign was launched on World AIDS Day 2007 with the slogan Talk [RED], which was introduced to the official 12 [RED] businesses, its employees and the public in January 2008. It has been rather successful, and now in 2009 the campaign goes into its second year with the slogan Think [RED], Do Safe. Moses-Burton was quoted as saying in the TODAY newspaper  How can I make HIV/AIDS sexy? I wanted people to start talking about it. Twelve companies have each adopted a month, and during their month brought awareness about HIV/AIDS to its employees and the public.

Suzette Moses-Burton is well deserving of this nomination of person of the year for 2008. As she stated in a World AIDS Day speech this year, There is still much we have to do and the road will be long and arduous. It will call for new leaders to be identified and to use their influence. 

Staying Alive:  Brand new from the MTV stables is a new campaign that challenges young people to ignite a movement to change their sexual behaviour, and turn previously held norms on their heads to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS specifically in Kenya, Trinidad and Tobago, and Ukraine.

These are the pages of the Caribbean Countries KNOW YOUR STATUS website. It is currently under construction. However we  have inluded some usable material on the KYS Project drawn from the planners library. Everything from that document is here on www.knowyourstatus.info albeit in separate pages. It's 'webpaged' solely in English for now. It's called The Guide to the KYS Initiative.

A Spanish/English Version is available as a downloadable '.pdf '. You can also see it in its original form as a slideshow.

The Know Your Status Initiative proposes a series of actions and tools aimed at increasing the publics demand for HIV testing and counseling services.

Although HIV/AIDS is a growing problem in the Caribbean, Jamaica has so far avoided a widespread epidemic. With a population of approximately 2.6 million, about 20,000 to 22,000 inhabitants are living with HIV/AIDS, giving it has a prevalence of 1.2 percent, a figure which is not nearly as high as that of neighbors Haiti and the Dominican Republic.