Obama Signs HIV/AIDS Bill Extension: Lifting of AIDS Travel Ban

(Washington) President Barack Obama signed an extension of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS bill this morning.

The legislation provides care, treatment and support services to nearly half a million people, most of whom are low-income.

Obama also announced that the Department of Health and Human services has finally crafted a new regulation spelling the end to the HIV Travel and Immigration Ban. The regulation goes into effect in January.

“We often speak as if AIDS is going on somewhere else. Often overlooked is that we face a serious HIV/AIDS epidemic of our own,” Obama said prior to the signing. He noted that early on, AIDS was considered a “gay disease, and those who had it were viewed with suspicion.”

This is the fourth re-authorization of the Ryan White bill, and Obama said it was the first time that the bill was not controversial or divisive, and passed with bi-partisian support.

There are 1.1 million living with HIV/AIDs in the United States; more than 56,000 cases are added each year. Obama noted that gay men, though they comprise 2 to 3 percent of the population, make up about half of all new cases, and that African-Americans make up almost half.

Obama said he hoped the lifting of the travel ban would help end the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS. He also said that he and his wife Michelle would be getting a second AIDS test soon.

For 22 years, United States had one of the most restrictive policies on the immigration and travel of HIV-positive people in the world. According to a historian writing for SHAFR.org:

“It compelled all non-citizens to attest that they were HIV-negative before being admitted to the United States for any reason – despite the obvious impossibility of enforcing this provision. At the same time, non-citizens living long-term in the United States were denied permanent resident categorization solely on basis of their HIV-positive status. While invoking its sovereign rights to control immigration and tourism, the U.S. government clung to policies suffused with the ignorance and bias toward HIV-positive people illustrated at the earliest stages of the AIDS pandemic.

“It disregarded the fact that for almost 25 years, it has been common medical knowledge that one cannot contract or transmit HIV casually. AIDS activists asserted that the HIV bar dissuaded immigrants unsure of their HIV status from getting tested; prompted HIV-positive immigrants not to seek to medical treatment until they had full-blown AIDS; and caused HIV-positive people seeking visas to lie on their applications and then enter the U.S. without their medications – situations posing exactly the threats to public health the 1987 ban aimed to prevent.”

In July 2008 as part of an AIDS bill, Congress voted to restore the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to remove HIV from the immigration and visitor ban list. George W. Bush signed it into law – but HHS had not yet issued a revised rule until today, which meant that those with HIV and AIDS were still banned from the country.