The Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (CAREC) is accelerating its safe sex campaign in response to growing evidence that islanders are refusing to arm themselves with condoms.

Surveys in Jamaica have found that condom use among sexually active people was "at best modest,'' University of West Indies social sciences lecturer Ms Heather Ricketts revealed at a series of workshops on AIDS and the media this week.

She said this was in spite of high levels of awareness and specific knowledge about HIV and AIDS.

Ms Ricketts conducted the 1994 national survey along with a team of medical researchers.

It also surfaced during the workshops that the number of AIDS cases per capita in the Bahamas, Bermuda and Barbados was helping to push the number of new cases in the Caribbean above United States rates.

The Jamaica survey found that approximately 61 percent of sexually active respondents between the ages of 15 and 19 reported having sex without a condom sometimes or always. The number was higher (74 percent) in the 20 to 29 age group.

Overall, the results showed that only 13 percent of the respondents said they rarely or never had sex without a condom.

And that is cause for concern, CAREC AIDS Education/Prevention Campaign co-ordinator Ms Claudette Francis said.

In Jamaica, chief medical officer Dr. Peter Figueroa has estimated there are several thousand HIV-infected people on the island -- most of whom did not know they were infected.

STD clinic head Dr. Tina Mylton-Kong pointed out an even more alarming factor: even if people did know they carried the virus, they were not using condoms.

Dr. Mylton-Kong said Jamaicans needed to enact legislation similar to Bermuda, which makes it an offense to knowingly infect a person with HIV.

She said she knew of a prostitute who had carried HIV since 1989, without developing any AIDS-defining illnesses, and she was "coming in here with STDs.'' "We need a law,'' she said. "Patients who are HIV-positive are returning with STDs. It scares me to know how many asymptomatic people there are out there with the AIDS virus.'' Ms Francis said: "We still have not seen the full brunt of the epidemic, so the increase in new cases above the US is a major concern.''