community allows itself to be complacent in the fight against AIDS, a speaker warned yesterday.

And politicians must be held accountable and not allowed to "nap at the helm'' or else the Island's tourism industry could also suffer if the Island did not get on top of its AIDS problem.

Dr. Victoria Cargill, an AIDS activist and associate professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine shared these thoughts with more than 60 people at the Cathedral Hall in Hamilton last night.

In an earnest 45-minute speech that mingled sombre statistics, with unforgettably graphic slides of people in advanced stages of the illness, Dr.

Cargill urged the audience to learn from the mistakes made in the United States.

"You are part of a global village,'' she said. "And I have been told that Bermudians are some of the most well travelled people in the world so you go everywhere.

"Unfortunately some of you are going to go everywhere and bring home more than photographs. Some of you already probably have.

"Every 15 seconds in the world someone becomes HIV infected... every 13 seconds someone in this world dies of HIV infection.'' Dr. Cargill said that the difficulty with viral infections was they could be outrun because they travelled with people.

The only alternative she suggested would be for persons to travel to a place where no-one else lived.

However as soon as a person with the virus reached that place the problem would be there and the crisis would continue.

Therefore she said the only choice available to Bermudians is to deal with the virus head on and accept nothing less than "non-judgmental, factual, scientifically accurate AIDS information that is state of the art and up to date''.

Dr. Cargill said there should be no argument about whether people should get scientific, credible, accurate and factual information about AIDS although how this information was disseminated would reflect the values of the individuals involved in the distribution.

She said that fact often gets missed when organisations argue about whether to push abstinence or condom use as a tool to prevent the spread of HIV infection.

"Dead people have a terribly irritating habit,'' she continued. "Dead people don't listen, dead people don't change their behaviour and dead people don't wear condoms.'' Minister's warning: Page 6