HOME | ARCHIVE | EMAIL US | TRAVEL SECTION

USA

HIV Travel Ban on Visitors to US to be Lifted Early Next Year, Obama Says

Details of final “rule” eliminating ban to be announced on Monday
 

WASHINGTON, October 30, 2009  –  The Obama Administration will be publishing a final “rule” on Monday (November 2) that will, from early next year, eliminate the travel ban on those with HIV/Aids wishing to enter the United States, the President said this morning.

“Twenty-two years ago, in a decision rooted in fear rather than fact, the United States instituted a travel ban on entry into the country for people living with HIV/Aids,” President Obama said.

“Now, we talk about reducing the stigma of this disease – yet we’ve treated a visitor living with it as a threat.

“We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the Aids pandemic, yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people from HIV from entering our own country.

“If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/Aids, we need to act like it,” he insisted.

“And that’s why, on Monday, my administration will publish a final rule that eliminates the travel ban effective just after the New Year.

“Congress and President Bush began this process last year, and they ought to be commended for it,” he continued.  “We are finishing the job

The President was speaking at a ceremony where he signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009, named after the 13-year-old boy from central Indiana contracted HIV/AIDS from a transfusion.

“It has been nearly three decades since [the HIV] virus first became known,” President Obama said.  “But for years, we refused to recognise it for what it was.

“It was coined a ‘gay disease’.  Those who had it were viewed with suspicion.  There was a sense among some that people afflicted by Aids somehow deserved their fate and that it was acceptable for our nation to look the other way.”

For the full transcript of President Obama’s speech, click HERE.

CLICK HERE FOR PRINTER FRIENDLY PAGE

Seed Newsvine