Bermuda, an AIDS expert disclosed yesterday.

Government epidemiologist Ms Rhonda Daniels said that between 1989 and 1993, 3,425 years of potential life were lost due to AIDS. Heart disease was second with a total of 2,757 years. Last year alone, 888 prime years were lost to AIDS.

And each year in Bermuda, an average of at least 30 people are newly diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, she told Hamilton Rotarians.

Ms Daniels further said that a budget of at least $1 million was now needed to cope with AIDS in Bermuda.

Call for AIDS `budget' And she said teenagers, who account for almost 30 percent of reported sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and are having sex when they are as young as 13, must be targeted in AIDS education efforts.

Ms Daniels called for the Country's leaders to recognise AIDS was a huge problem and to create a special "HIV/AIDS Budget'' to deal with the "astronomical'' cost of educating the public, establishing prevention programmes, and caring for people with AIDS.

According to health statistics, the average age at which teenagers first have a sexual encounter is 14 for girls and 13 for boys.

"There are no established AIDS programmes in the school system and the subject of AIDS should not be introduced on its own,'' Ms Daniels said. "It needs to be incorporated with family health and wise decision-making skills.'' She noted the Health and Education Ministries were working on implementing such a programme.

Denying children and teenagers sex education could lead to ignorance and infection.

"We must face reality,'' she said. "Our children are inheriting a world of AIDS. This along with violence, drugs and alcohol abuse should not be our legacy to them.'' Ms Daniels, a founding member of AIDS education group the Allan Vincent Smith Foundation, noted that although there were currently 194 reported cases of HIV infection, "in actual fact, we do not know how many people are infected with HIV''.

HIV/AIDS was a "silent infection'' with no initial symptoms such as those experienced with other sexually transmitted diseases.

Going by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that every person diagnosed with HIV and AIDS may have infected five to ten other people before finding out they are carriers, she said: "There could be 2,000 to 4,000 people infected with HIV (in Bermuda) and they do not even know it.'' By December, 1994 the number of people with AIDS and those who had died of AIDS stood at 291.

Although AIDS is the third highest cause of death in Bermuda, it is "number one'' in terms of the number of years of potential life lost before the 65-year age of retirement.

"Just imagine the number of people who have died in the prime of their working life, who may have had something positive to contribute to this community,'' she said.

Although there are many people in the community helping to cope with AIDS, there is still much to be done, she said.

"We denied for so long that violence, drugs and crime existed, and now this community is paying the price,'' she said. "Women and children are suffering abuse and our youth are displaying their anger and frustration in the form of violent acts of crime against each other.

"If we continue to deny the existence of the AIDS epidemic, this community will pay a price. It has already begun to happen.'' "What I am saying at this moment is not new to any of us. It appears no-one wants to hear about HIV/AIDS, because there are preconceived ideas about "who gets AIDS''.

"The tendency is to empathise with the innocent victims. There are no innocent victims. This is not a disease certain groups of people deserve.''