Bermuda must set up a national AIDS commission, if it has any hope of winning the war against the spread of the deadly disease.

Public Safety Minister Quinton Edness sounded this warning this week after hearing the results of a recent survey carried out by WAVE Marketing for AIDS-support group The Allan Vincent Smith Foundation.

The Foundation -- through a random telephone poll of 700 residents -- last month revealed that while most teens had a clear understanding of the spread of AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases, many still refused to protect themselves during sex.

While 81 percent of the teens polled said they learned of AIDS in school, the survey noted, nearly 55 percent admitted they continued to have sex and refused to use condoms.

Thirty-five percent of the teens said they believed the best place for condoms to be available was in schools, while a further 35 percent preferred pharmacies.

But Mr. Edness -- an advocate of putting condoms in school -- said condoms should be available "wherever young people gather''.

While noting that the issue came under the Health Ministry, he said: "From a public safety point of view I feel even more strongly that condoms should be available discreetly for young people in schools. This should be done with massive consultation.

"Condoms should be available wherever young people gather, including in the nightclubs and sports arena. We should have far more signs up warning young people about the dangers of AIDS.'' He added: "I know this (the battle to educate young people about AIDS) is not a problem peculiar to Bermuda. In Australia and a number of other countries, condoms are free and available. We have to get over this misconception that condoms teach people to be promiscuous. Research has shown that this is not true.

"We have to say to them that the safest way they have to conduct themselves is to abstain until they marry. But this does not always happen. Young people in their teens are sexually inclined. And we are being negligent in our duties if we do not warn them.'' Mr. Edness -- who was Health Minister when Government launched a major anti-AIDS advertising campaign in 1993 -- said he hopes to put together another campaign soon.

"We have to realise that young people who were exposed to the other campaign have grown up,'' he pointed out. "We have another group of young people who need to be told in the best way that they can understand.'' Having called for a national AIDS commission three years ago to be set up with full-time staff to oversee Bermuda's AIDS education and prevention efforts, Mr. Edness said: "I know that this Country is going to have to come to that for us to make a major impact on the reduction of young people exposed to this deadly virus.'' Health Minister Clarence Terceira, who took up the portfolio last month, said he had not yet met with Mr. Edness nor health officials to discuss the issue.

EDUCATION ED