Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 11, 1994                   TAG: 9411110046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

NEW AIDS CZAR TAKES OVER

Fleming, elevated to the post on a permanent basis Thursday, also expressed alarm that young people ``are increasingly tuning out the prevention message.''

Clinton, whose first AIDS policy director, Kristine Gebbie, was criticized as ineffective, pledged that Fleming would have ``direct access to me'' and the Cabinet.

He asked her to prepare ``a detailed report on the rapid increase in AIDS among adolescents.''

Clinton noted that a quarter-million Americans have died from AIDS, and more than 400,000 have developed the disease. One million have been infected with HIV, with 40,000 new infections each year.

Fleming said half of all HIV infections occur before age 25, and one in four who become infected contract the virus before age 20.

Fleming spent the past two decades as a top aide to liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill and in health and education posts in the Carter and Clinton administrations.

As an aide to the late Rep. Ted Weiss, D-N.Y., who was on a House oversight subcommittee, she recalled spending the first 12 years of the AIDS epidemic ``banging on the doors of a bureaucracy that too often turned a deaf ear to the cries of the American people.''

Until recently, she was Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala's special assistant, helping coordinate that agency's prime role in the AIDS fight.

Fleming said she accepted the director's job permanently after initial reluctance because ``I realized it was not impossible.''

``I have power. I have authority. I have access. I can make things happen,'' Fleming said before the ceremony, which was attended by a score of leaders of AIDS groups.