Posted on 10/30/2009 11:51:08 AM PDT by darkside321
The US is to end its 22-year ban on people with HIV entering the country, President Barack Obama has confirmed.
Mr Obama made the announcement as he extended funding for an act that provides HIV/Aids related health care.
"If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/Aids, we need to act like it," Mr Obama said.
The US is one of only about a dozen countries barring entry on HIV status. The ban is expected to be lifted at the beginning of 2010.
'End the stigma'
Mr Obama confirmed the move as he signed the Ryan White HIV/Aids Treatment Extension Act.
Mr Obama said the entry ban had been "rooted in fear rather than fact".
He said: "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 with HIV from entering our own country.
"On Monday, my administration will publish a final rule that eliminates the travel ban effective just after the New Year."
Mr Obama added: "It will also take an effort to end the stigma that has stopped people from getting tested, that has stopped people from facing their own illness and that has sped the spread of this disease for far too long."
The process to lift the ban had begun under the administration of George W Bush.
The Ryan White Act is named after a 13-year-old boy who contracted the virus via blood transfusion and helped educate Americans about the disease until his death in 1990 aged 18.
The act helps about 500,000 people, many on low incomes, by providing treatment and support.
HIV was added in 1987 to the list of diseases disqualifying people from entering the US.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
That made me feel better just reading it.
haha :D
LMAO...I don’t wanna do Pelosi...sorry. Delete yes, do...not a chance in hell!!!
Yeah maybe we can let all those infected with Ebola in too. No wait! That's not a "gay", politically correct disease. Silly me!
I find it funny everyone ignored the sentence that the process began under George W.
Frankly, the ban should be lifted.
I am not in favor of them coming to us for medical treatment, but I see no reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to travel here just to travel. That’s ridiculous.
Then add that in as a ban. Don’t ban travel outright.
If we treated AIDS like the contagious and life-threatening disease that it is, there would probably be fewer people dying from it.
We always appear helpless when disaster first strikes. The 1998 embassy bomb blast, which resulted in a massive destruction of property and loss of lives, exposed how vulnerable and unprepared we were in dealing with disaster.
When someone dies of Aids, too often we painfully accept such a tragic event as being either an act of witchcraft or an act of God.
And Aids prevention is a foreign language to young women and men in some parts of Kenya. According to a recent study conducted by the National Aids STD Control Programme (NASCOP), 33.3% of girls aged between 15 and 19 years in the western city of Kisumu were HIV positive.
Prostitution
Part of this is due to prostitution. Poverty makes young girls drop out of school and run to the city to work as child minders, where most of them earn between $10 and $15 a month.
Because this money is not enough to provide for her family at home, the girl is driven to prostitution at an early age where she thinks she can earn more money daily.
As Kisumu is a tourist area at the shores of Lake Victoria, girls can find customers day and night - receiving only 50 shillings (less than $1) for each transaction.
Wife inheritance
Wife inheritance - where a widow becomes the property of her late husband's brother - also contributes to the spread of HIV.
After the death of a breadwinner, the widow cannot provide adequate care, food, clothing and above all school fees, so many women see wife inheritance as a solution to financial constraints.
A woman who does not agree to being "inherited" is barred from entering her husband's family homestead. If she dies, her brothers in law are barred by custom from digging her graves.
Male domination
In this male-dominated society, a woman is not expected to participate in important decisions. A woman is considered to have no right even to ask a man to wear a condom, and when it comes to sex it her duty is to oblige. She is used as a sex object, and expected to suffer in silence.
Even when men know the importance of taking precautions, they often cannot afford them. A packet of condoms costs almost the same as half a loaf of bread.
Why wouldn’t it be sickening?
It’s just another way to open the door for open borders. People with AIDS are a financial drain and, that I can think of, no plus side.
Unless the newbies with Aids are going to a Catholic run hospital, I see no reason for them to be allowed entrance.
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Hey, 'socially liberal' genius.....you can't get aids from somebody who isn't in the same country as you....and that was the point of the ban. Maybe we'll just ask the HIV carriers (notice I didn't write queers) to sign a promise not to have sex while they're here, think that will work?
“Theyll want to get free health care here. Thats the problem.”
Correction: They WILL get ‘free health care’ here.
Oh sure Bam...why not throw open the floodgates and let every 3rd World disease have equal opportunity to infect all Americans as well.
By all means. With AIDS being almost exclusively a gay disease, the gay community should be tagged if we go to a “vaunted” single payer style health care.
No need to discriminate against smokers and fat people if the medically and financially burdensome gay community is given the proverbial free ride.
I am not sure why this is a good idea. Maybe he just wants to spread the HIV around. It will just strain our healthcare system even more.
I am not sure why this is a good idea. Maybe he just wants to spread the HIV around. It will just strain our healthcare system even more.
Does anyone have any bandaids? My head just exploded.
The spread of HIV will once again be the white-mans fault....Barry’s white half.
Just in time for all that free health care.
But hey, it won’t cost a thing. Il Douche and Nancy Necrosis say so! [s/o].
Its just another way to open the door for open borders. People with AIDS are a financial drain and, that I can think of, no plus side.
Good Lord.
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