a room full of teenagers entering what could be the most dangerous days of their lives.

"I'm telling you your age group is dying much quicker than mine,'' said Bermudian-born Elsie Sharpe, who now works for the State of Georgia as an HIV-AIDS counsellor.

"My generation is almost already gone and you're the main target now,'' she yesterday told an assembly of fourth and fifth year students from Northlands, Warwick, and Sandys Secondary Schools, as well as Bermuda High School and Christian Deliverance school.

The featured speaker in the first of series of forums held at the BIU's Dr.

E.F. Gordon Memorial Hall, Ms Sharpe brought into the focus the hard realities of this century's sexual plague.

The educational forums are held yearly in conjunction with World AIDS Day, said Gaylia Landry of the World AIDS Day Committee.

"I have caseload of 645 patients and I can safely say that 85 percent of them are females between the ages of 13 and 29,'' she said.

"If I see anyone over the age of 35 they're usually ready to die.'' To cries of "no way,'' Ms Sharpe told the 200 or so students assembled that it was guaranteed if she took blood samples from everyone in the room she would find someone who was HIV positive.

"HIV has a window of three months and in many cases a person doesn't even know they have it. You'll get the flu and it'll go away; but HIV doesn't go away.'' "From there it can take three months to ten years for HIV to develop into full-blown AIDS,'' she added. Death usually follows within months.

Beyond the shock treatment was a message to either abstain or at the very least practise safe sex.

Unprotected sex she added, will result in sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhoea or syphilis and in the worst case will lead to HIV.

UNIONS UNS EDUCATION ED AIDS AID