No More US HIV Travel Ban In 2010
Dave BondThe United States is now among the few countries, including Qatar, Yemen and Sudan, that have been banning HIV infected visitors from crossing their borders.
The Congress and the Bush administration began the process to eliminate the HIV travel ban. The President Obama announced that his administration would finish it by revealing the final rules to lift the ban.
The executive director of Project Inform, a San Francisco advocacy organisation for people stricken with AIDS/HIV, Dana Van Gorder, said the ban is not justified by any evidence at the moment, whether it was that visitors were coming to America and infecting citizens or any further reasonable public health concern on which they could pursue this policy.
Participants at the U.S. Conference on AIDS, hosted this week in San Francisco, were thrilled by the news.
Director of government relations and public policy for National Minority AIDS Council Ravinia Hayes-Cozier said the ban stemmed from old beliefs about how the progression of a disease is stopped without giving any attention to the science.
He added that the policy and the science are now in tune.
The U.S. health officials introduced the HIV/AIDS travel ban in 1987, saying it was considered to be of those communicable diseases that could stop an individual from entering America. In 1993, the Congress had codified the ban into law, and signed by President Bill Clinton.
The Bush administration allowed HIV-positive visitors to enter the US in 2006 based on short-term or business visas. Last year, President George W. Bush initiated the process to repeal rules that stopped HIV-infected students, immigrants and tourists from getting visas.
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Filed under Health & Environment, Travel News, World News