“If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it,’’ Obama said at the White House. “It’s a step that will encourage people to get tested and get treatment, it’s a step that will keep families together, and it’s a step that will save lives.’’
He made the announcement 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 500,000 people, most of them low-income.
The bill is named for an Indiana boy who in 1984 contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion at age 13. White went on to fight AIDS-related discrimination against him and others like him and help educate the country about the disease. He died in April 1990 at age 18. His mother, Jeanne White-Ginder, attended the signing ceremony, as did several members of Congress and HIV/AIDS activists.
It was while White and others were fighting discrimination during a time of widespread fear and ignorance about AIDS that the Department of Health and Human Services in 1987 added the disease to the list of communicable diseases that disqualified a person from entering the United States.
The department tried in 1991 to reverse its decision but was opposed by Congress, which went the other way two years later and made HIV infection the only medical condition explicitly listed under immigration law as grounds for inadmissibility to the United States.
The law effectively has kept out thousands of students, tourists, and refugees and has complicated the adoption of children with HIV. No major international AIDS conference has been held in the United States since 1993, because HIV-positive activists and researchers cannot enter the country.
Obama said that by lifting the ban, the United States will take a step toward ending the stigma against people with HIV/AIDS, something he said has stopped people from getting tested and has helped spread the disease. More than 1 million people live with HIV/AIDS in the United States, and more than 56,000 new infections are reported every year.
