Her mother's death four years ago, an AIDS counselor says, was the biggest hint of all.

AIDS counselors encourage, but do not require, infected people to alert their partners, and the health department offers to help notify them.

She helped raise funds for the program by creating quilts and served as a peer AIDS counselor and educator.

"Women's issues were not given an equal platform, I felt insulted," she told a meeting of fellow AIDS counselors last week.

"All of them have horror stories," said David Siebert, an AIDS counselor there.

When she returned to London she became an AIDS counselor.

In poor, rural Missouri, AIDS counselors and medical professionals said, traditional efforts at prevention education do not work.

A compromise has an AIDS counselor working part-time in Meriden.

There are too many patients and too few AIDS counselors.

But after eight years as an AIDS counselor, she is honest about her limitations.