President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. will overturn a 20-year-old U.S. travel ban against people with HIV early next year.
The order will be finalized Monday, Obama said, completing a process begun during the Bush administration.
The U.S. has been one of about a dozen countries that bar entry to travelers based on their HIV status. Obama said the ban will be lifted just after the new year, after a waiting period of about 60 days.
"If we want to be a global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it," Obama said at the White House before signing a bill to extend the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program. Begun in 1990, the program provides medical care, medication and support services to about half a million people, most of them low-income.
In 1987, at a time of widespread fear and ignorance about HIV, the Department of Health and Human Services added the disease to the list of communicable diseases that disqualified a person from entering the U.S.
The department tried in 1991 to reverse its decision but was opposed by Congress, which in 1993 went the other way and made HIV infection the only medical condition explicitly listed under immigration law as grounds for inadmissibility to the U.S.
Top Headlines, U.S., World, Politics, Entertainment and Sports News - AOL News
The order will be finalized Monday, Obama said, completing a process begun during the Bush administration.
The U.S. has been one of about a dozen countries that bar entry to travelers based on their HIV status. Obama said the ban will be lifted just after the new year, after a waiting period of about 60 days.
"If we want to be a global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it," Obama said at the White House before signing a bill to extend the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program. Begun in 1990, the program provides medical care, medication and support services to about half a million people, most of them low-income.
In 1987, at a time of widespread fear and ignorance about HIV, the Department of Health and Human Services added the disease to the list of communicable diseases that disqualified a person from entering the U.S.
The department tried in 1991 to reverse its decision but was opposed by Congress, which in 1993 went the other way and made HIV infection the only medical condition explicitly listed under immigration law as grounds for inadmissibility to the U.S.
Top Headlines, U.S., World, Politics, Entertainment and Sports News - AOL News
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