Gere Fears AIDS Epidemic Hitting India
Published
Richard Gere fears that Asia will be "lost" if the AIDS epidemic hits India hard.
The actor and AIDS activist is traveling to the subcontinent this week along with President Bush. Gere may not agree with Bush on everything, but he "certainly can praise him" for bringing attention to AIDS in India, the actor said on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday.
"The president of the United States coming there in a world where he's seemingly obsessed with terrorism, clearly obsessed with it, and talking about HIV/AIDS in the same breath, in the same paragraph, extremely important," Gere said.
Bush has said he hopes to address the AIDS crisis with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
"India is a country that I care about deeply," Gere said. "We're talking about a population in India that is close to a billion people. If this crisis hits them to the degree it's expected to, we've lost Asia."