a local AIDS support group revealed.

The number represents an increase of about 30 orphans since January.

And speaking to parents at a forum on Monday night, chairman of the Allan Vincent Smith Foundation Mr. Martin Smith stressed that AIDS is not just one community group's problem.

"AIDS is a Bermuda problem,'' he said.

Also noting that Bermuda has recorded 211 deaths as a result of the disease since the first case was diagnosed in the 1980s, he said: "AIDS knows no boundaries. It does not care. But we have to care''.

In the first six months of this year, Mr. Smith said, AIDS claimed eight lives.

"Since the first of July, we have lost 25. The only way we're going to resolve this is if we all work together.'' Mr. Smith, who lost his son Allan to AIDS in September, 1991, stressed that AIDS is an epidemic much broader than the homosexual and drug-using community.

"We have to change the whole social structure of how we conduct our lives,'' he said.

Visiting executive director of The Black Leadership Commission on AIDS Mrs.

Debra Fraser-Howze, who was guest speaker at the forum, agreed.

Noting Bermuda's unusually high AIDS statistics, she said: "There's no institution in Bermuda that can handle all the AIDS that you all in Bermuda have coming. So your non-governmental institutions will have to take responsibility, including churches''.

"We need a revolution on AIDS,'' she stressed. "It is time for frank discussion and it is time for all of Bermuda to come together.'' Health Minister the Hon. Quinton Edness, in praising the local World AIDS Day Committee and its chairperson Mrs. Joan Dillas Wright for the AIDS activities carried out so far, yesterday said: "I'm pleased with the support so far and the main speakers, particularly Mrs. Debra Fraser-Howze''.

He said while he was not "prepared wholeheartedly'' to accept that Bermuda needs a Black Leadership Commission on AIDS "because we are a community struggling to bring races together'', he agreed with Mrs. Fraser-Howze's reasons for suggesting such a coalition.

"She was saying that black leaders have to play a greater role in delivering a meaningful message at whatever level. I support that. More needs to be done in the community in general.

"I would like to think that we can work together. But surely as we work together we have to face reality and in reality there are different communities and different cultural aspects.'' Mr. Edness said he was also pleased with the Rev. Philip Joudry's address at the ecumenical service last Sunday, and Mrs. Fraser-Howze message to teens and parents earlier this week.

"We agree that parents have got to learn how to talk to the young people about this,'' he said. "This is what we have been trying to say all along. We don't want to have the guilt of having young people become pregnant or contracting the AIDS virus because we could not talk to them.'' Noting the number of orphans in Bermuda as a result of AIDS, Mr. Edness said: "So far, most, if not all, of those children, with the assistance very often of Social Services, are being looked after by relatives or foster parents''.

He said while Social Services responds to any child in need and will continue to monitor them, "the community is the great responder''.

And, Mr. Edness said, the best solution to the situation is "that the community continue to respond with the assistance of Government''.

Hopefully, he added, most people will try to come out and support today's World AIDS Day activities which include a proclamation ceremony and quilt launching at noon at City Hall, visiting AIDS activist Mrs. Fraser-Howze speaking at the Hamilton Lions' luncheon at 1.15 p.m., and "A Time To Act'' torch light walk from Victoria Park at 7 p.m.