ELECTIONS ’92 : Clinton Vows Better Efforts Against AIDS : Campaign: Democrat says Bush has failed to fight the disease strongly enough. He also calls for an end to misconceptions about the illness.

In a speech promised last spring and delivered five days before the presidential election, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton on Thursday indicted the Bush Administration for failing to mount a stringent attack against the spread of AIDS and laid out a plan he said would reverse that course.

Speaking to several hundred people in the rotunda of the Jersey City courthouse, Clinton also demanded that the American public strip away the ignorance that surrounds the perception of the disease.

He said he would fully implement two existing sets of federal recommendations dealing with AIDS and establish a national educational program to battle misconceptions about the illness.

He pledged to increase federal funding for research and treatment, fully implement the Ryan White Health Care Act and appoint one person to coordinate all federal disease-fighting efforts.

“We have still not done enough as a nation to stop the spread of AIDS and to help those who are living with it,” he said. “Most of us have preferred to believe AIDS is not our problem, that it’s a problem for a few particular or isolated groups in our society . . . . The truth is, it is everybody’s problem.”

Pointedly, before an audience that included those with AIDS and others wearing red ribbons to commemorate victims of the disease, Clinton said: “We must all remember, for all of its terror and far reach, it is still a disease; it is not vengeance or punishment or just deserts, it is an illness.”

AIDS has killed more than 160,000 people in the United States alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The worldwide toll is estimated at 1 million.

“Americans are dying of the most treatable affliction, ignorance, and we need to cure that first,” he said.

The Arkansas governor said education about AIDS should begin in the early grades and should be “blunt and clear” in tone.

“Children should be discouraged from having premature sexual contact and from ever having any contact with needles carrying drugs, but they must be told that this killer can kill them, and their odds of getting it are far greater than most of them think,” he said.

He also suggested that those who have the disease bear a responsibility to prevent its spread.

“There is at the beginning the matter of personal responsibility,” he said. “Those who think they may be positive should be tested as soon as possible so they can be treated. Those whose behavior puts them at a high risk should reassess that before they put themselves and those who they care for in mortal danger.”

Clinton chose Jersey City for his speech because it has the sixth-highest rate of AIDS in the country. Clinton placed the AIDS crisis within the larger framework of the health care crisis, which he has placed near the top of his agenda during the campaign.

He also said he would place more emphasis than President Bush has on research into diseases suffered by women, including breast and ovarian cancers.

During his address, Clinton paid homage to what he called “American heroes”--those battling AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus that causes the disease. Among those he cited were Elizabeth Glaser and Bob Hattoy, who spoke about their experiences at the Democratic National Convention, and their counterpart, Mary Fisher, who spoke at the Republican Convention.

Members of the AIDS network were extremely enthusiastic about Clinton’s speech.

Jane Silver, policy director for the American Foundation for AIDS Research, described it as “powerful and historic.”

“He said all the right things,” she said. “It’s the first time in more than a decade of the epidemic that a national leader has embraced this very difficult issue--more than embraced it, put forward a plan to fight it. We all have been asking for leadership, funding and a commitment to end the epidemic, and that’s what we heard tonight.”

Times staff writer Marlene Cimons, in Washington, contributed to this story.