The Global Pulse Journal Blog

On October 30, 2009 President Obama announced the end of a 22-year ban on travel to the United States by people infected with the HIV virus. The President made good on an earlier promise, acting to eliminate a restriction he said was “rooted in fear rather than fact.” The new rule will take effect after a routine 60-day waiting period, ending the US’s position as one of only about a dozen countries that bar people who are infected with HIV.

The ban was enacted in 1987 at a time of widespread fear that HIV could be transmitted by casual contact and was further strengthened by Congress in 1993 as an amendment offered by Senator Jesse Helms. The ban covered both visiting tourists and foreigners seeking to live in this country. In 2008, President George W. Bush signed legislation, passed by Congress in July 2008, that repealed the statute on which the ban was based, although the ban remained in effect.

One of the results of the restriction has been that no major international conference on HIV/AIDS has been held in the United States since 1990, limiting collaboration and visibility of HIV/AIDS related research and issues in the United States media coverage. Many believe that lifting the ban would end the inconsistency in United States health policy, where the US has led efforts towards AIDS prevention internationally while upholding restrictions that prevented international AIDS researchers and activists from gathering at conferences in the US.

President Obama stated, “If we want to be a global leader in combating H.I.V./AIDS, we need to act like it. Now, we talk about reducing the stigma of this disease, yet we’ve treated a visitor living with it as a threat.”

For more information:
Mahto M, Ponnusamy K, Schuhwerk M, Richens J, Lambert N, Wilkins E, Churchill DR, Miller RF, Behrens RH. “Knowledge, attitudes and health outcomes in HIV-infected travellers to the USA”. HIV Medicine 2006; 7: 201–204.