Penelope Campbell, who was yesterday awarded the Young Investigator Prize. - Contributed

A Jamaican has won one of the top prizes being awarded at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada.

Penelope Campbell, national officer with United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Jamaica, was yesterday presented with the International AIDS Society's Young Investigator Prize, Women and Girls and HIV/AIDS.

Ms. Campbell won the award from a field of 12,000 persons from around the world, who submitted abstracts on different projects to the conference organisers. She copped the prize for an initiative - The Bashy Bus - which aims to bring youth-friendly services to vulnerable adolescents in high HIV/STI-prevalence communities, across three parishes in Jamaica - St. Catherine, St. Ann and St. James.

"I feel ecstatic! I am elated to be selected from 12,000 participants, and this is the first time that UNICEF is winning such an award," a beaming Ms. Campbell told The Gleaner moments after she was presented with the top prize, which includes a US$3,000 cash award.

Birth of the bashy bus

Ms. Campbell said the Bashy Bus was developed after increasing reports about potentially risky sexual practices among young people in Jamaica, including the sex-on-the-bus phenomenon, which was widely reported in local media. Those practices include transactional sex, sex in public transportation vehicles and sex between teenage girls and older male partners, which puts the girls at higher risk for HIV infection than their male counterparts.

She said the bus, which is equipped with a laboratory and staff, offers voluntary counselling and HIV testing and usually targets young people in neutral areas such as malls and shopping centres where large numbers of them gather.

"The bus is an attempt to create a positive, adolescent-friendly, mobile space in which young persons can learn positively about sex and sexuality," Ms. Campbell stated.

She said the project was launched in September last year after a baseline study, which was commissioned by UNICEF, was done. Children First and Research Analysis and Associates also assisted in the project.

Ms. Campbell, who has been with UNICEF for approximately five years, will leave Jamaica to take up a position at UNICEF's regional office in Kenya next week.

The 16th International AIDS Conference is being held in Toronto, Canada, from August 13-18, under the theme, 'Time to Deliver'. More than 20,000 delegates from around the world are attending the conference, which will highlight development, research and trends in HIV/AIDS.