strategy on the disease isn't developed soon, a prominent US clinician has warned.

According to Dr. Victoria Cargill, an associate professor of medicine at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, the ratio of male AIDS cases to female has returned in Bermuda to the fairly even levels that were evident when the first local AIDS patient, a woman, turned up in the early 1980s.

"This is a warning shot,'' Dr. Cargill, who is in Bermuda to mark World AIDS Day on Friday with a week-long series of lectures, said in an interview yesterday. "All those people who got infected in the `80s are now showing up -- and a lot of them are women.'' The relatively equal number of male and female AIDS cases, Dr. Cargill continued, suggests that all segments of the Bermudian population -- and not just commonly associated groups like homosexuals or drug users -- are at risk of getting the disease.

"I can predict from the figures,'' the AIDS clinician said, "that the disease will be spreading to and among the heterosexual community -- and that includes children.'' Fortunately, said Dr. Cargill, who also investigates the effectiveness of AIDS-drug combinations for a Cleveland clinical trials unit, Bermuda's size and isolation sets it "at an interesting point. It is ripe to do a major push for behavioural education.'' And such a push, she said, would have to be a part of "a concerted national AIDS plan''.

"You need a national plan in terms of prevention, treatment and especially care,'' Dr. Cargill said. "If you don't develop any strategy in these areas, I'm afraid you're stuck. And your proximity to the Eastern coast of the United States makes that very scary.'' As an American, Dr. Cargill said that she hoped Bermuda "could learn from the lessons and mistakes of the US and other countries''.

"The incidence of infection among adolescents in particular has skyrocketed,'' she said. "In parts of southeast Asia, the number of cases has gone up 600 percent.'' World AIDS Day: Page 2