WASHINGTON -- President Obama said Friday the U.S. will overturn a 22-year-old travel and immigration ban against people with HIV early next year.
The order will be finalized on Monday, Obama said, completing a process begun during the Bush administration.
The U.S. has been among a dozen countries that bar entry to travelers with visas or anyone seeking a green card based on their HIV status.
"If we want to be the global leader in combatting 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.
The bill is named for an Indiana teenager who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion at age 13. White went on to fight AIDS-related discrimination.
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. AP
