Gere leaves AIDS home in crisis as funding is axed

[Guest guest]

Gere leaves Aids home in crisis as funding is axed

Actor withdraws from a project he helped to start as his trust

refuses to extend its three-year contract

Dan McDougall in New Delhi, Sunday July 17, 2005

The Observer

Anjali Gopalan is hunched at her cluttered desk casting her eyes

over a bewildering array of paperwork.

'It is impossible to get a grant in this country. The government

wants bloody duplicates of everything,' she mutters, signing form

after form. 'Duplicates of duplicates, it is driving me crazy.'

Behind her on the wall in the basement of the New Delhi Aids

orphanage she has run for 11 years, the figure staring from a large

photograph is unmistakable.

The Hollywood star Gere is holding a baby girl in his arms.

In faded jeans and a black sweater with a woven Tibetan scarf draped

around his neck, he looks every inch the globetrotting humanitarian.

'One of our girls,' Gopalan, 47, gesturing at the baby in the

photo. 'She is six years old now and was abandoned outside a train

station in Delhi as soon as she was able to walk. She had been

wandering around for half a day. She was diagnosed with Aids by a

street project and passed to us straight away. Nobody else would

take her.'

Gere has earned his prominence on the office wall at the Naz

Foundation unit for Aids orphans which lies in a cramped southern

suburb in the southern recesses of India's capital. As the charity's

main and, at times, sole benefactor for the past three years, he has

helped establish the only such orphanage in northern India and one

of only a handful in the entire country.

Through his Gere Foundation India Trust, based in Delhi, which helps

a number of projects in the sub-continent, the actor has helped give

refuge and constant medication for 30 Aids orphans aged between two

and 12, ploughing almost $200,000 into the project.

Yet the orphanage's worst nightmare was realised last week when

Gere's money dried up. His trust refused to extend its three-year

commitment to the project.

Gere's representatives say they have done what they had agreed. But

Gopalan, the founder and manager of the foundation, said the

decision was potentially catastrophic. ' has done so, so much

for the orphanage and we had always hoped he would continue to

support us.

Gopalan claims Gere's trust told her that it was no longer focusing

its energies on the specific care of Aids victims.

'For the past 12 months we have seen money from the West being

largely ploughed into Aids education and prevention, normally with

strong caveats on how the money is used.

'The concern for me and others who work with child victims of the

disease is obvious. The strategy - for which Gere has never

shown any support - is not reflective of heartfelt investment but of

US foreign policy aggressively promoting Christian [sexual]

abstinence. Aids sufferers, it seems, no longer fit into the

equation.'

Earlier this year Britain signalled a rift with America over Aids,

publicly rejecting President Bush's doctrine that abstinence

is the best way to stop the epidemic spreading.

The Bush administration has pledged $15 billion for Aids work in the

next five years, but the bulk of it will go to programmes that

stress abstinence.

While this is not true of Gere's foundation, Gopalan claims a number

of major US donors have told her that 'investment' in Aids victims

was no longer 'economically viable'.

'My honest opinion today is that donors in the United States in

particular no longer see victims of Aids as a measured investment,

and believe me it has been put to me in those exact terms by a

number of privately-run charities,' she added.

'I'm sure looking at their own spreadsheets their argument is clear,

and for every dollar invested in prevention they save thousands in

treatment and care.

'This would be fine if they weren't overlooking care programmes

altogether. I cannot believe my ears when I hear them tell me Aids

orphans aren't worth the investment.'

As she speaks I can hear the distinctively clumsy sound of tiny feet

echoing from the neat dormitories above our heads as the youngsters

playfully chase each other around their rooms.

To those such as Gudiya, three, dumped in a Delhi market, the

orphanage offers drugs she could not otherwise get and a nutritious

diet to maintain her immune system.

Last week the traumatised girl spoke in Hindi for the first time in

six months there. In time she will go to a local school.

Many observers say that the country is close to a huge problem, with

up to 5.1 million people infected with HIV already. If this estimate

is correct - and it is hotly contested by right-wing politicians -

India is the world's second-worst affected nation behind South

Africa.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1530203,00.

html