The United States has lifted a 22-year immigration ban which has stopped anyone with HIV/AIDS from entering the country.
The BBC reports:
President Obama said the ban was not compatible with US plans to be a leader in the fight against the disease.
The new rules come into force on Monday and the U.S. plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/AIDS summit for the first time in 2012.
The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s.
“We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the AIDS pandemic — yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people from HIV from entering our own country,” Obama said back in October, fulfilling a promise he made to gay advocates and acting to eliminate a restriction he said was “rooted in fear rather than fact.”
“If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it,” he said.
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The United States was one of only 12 countries, including Saudi Arabia and Libya, that prevented people with HIV from crossing its borders.