UN Urges Nations to lift Travel Ban on HIV Patients

UN chief Ban Ki-moon hailed US President Barack Obama's removal of a decades-old travel ban on HIV-positive visitors, and urged other countries to do the same.

"I congratulate President Obama on announcing the removal of the travel restrictions for people living with HIV from entering the United States," Ban said on Saturday in a statement released by UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.

AIDS/HIV - Worldwide distribution and Risk of Transmission
Epidemiologic studies indicate three broad yet distinct geographic patterns of transmission

"I urge all other countries with such restrictions to take steps to remove them at the earliest."

Obama announced his administration would overturn on Monday a controversial US policy that had been in place since 1987. The ban on foreign nationals with HIV/AIDS visiting the United States will effectively be lifted early next year.

"Such restrictions, strongly opposed by UNAIDS, are discriminatory and do not protect public health," the program said.

HIV/AIDS Risk Calculator
The HIV risk quiz helps you determine risk factors for HIV.

Ban has made the lifting of stigma and discrimination connected with AIDS a personal mission, first calling on countries to lift their travel restrictions in 2008 at a UN meeting on the disease.

The travel restrictions "should fill us all with shame," Ban told a global AIDS conference in August 2008.

Quiz on HIV / AIDS
Statistics tell us that the world HIV+ population has risen drastically from 8 million in 1990 to a whopping 33 million in 2007! Even more alarming is the fact that young people (below the age of 25) account for half of these infections! This is adequate proof for the lack of awareness among the general public even in these modern times. So take our quiz and brush up on the essential facts of HIV/AIDS.

There are 10 questions on HIV / AIDS in this quiz that will explore the depth of your knowledge and provide answers to the following:

Immune control of HIV ()
Symptoms of HIV/AIDS ()
Cure for AIDS ()
Acute HIV syndrome ()
World AIDS day ()
Western blot ()

According to UNAIDS, Ban's home country of South Korea is "in the last stages of removing travel restrictions," while China and Ukraine are among countries considering following suit.

US to End Travel Ban on HIV/AIDS Patients: Obama
President Barack Obama said Friday the United States would end in early 2010 a 22-year-old travel ban on foreign HIV patients, hailing the move as a step toward ending the stigma of the disease.

"Placing travel restrictions on people living with HIV has no public health justification. It is also a violation of human rights," said UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe.

On Friday, as he signed a bill reauthorizing funding for a federal program providing HIV-related health care, Obama announced the repeal of the travel ban, describing the 22-year-old policy as a "decision rooted in fear rather than fact."

"If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it," Obama said.

"And that's why on Monday, my administration will publish a final rule that eliminates the travel ban effective just after the New Year."

Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, signed legislation last year that removed HIV from a list of diseases "of public health significance" that effectively barred any person infected with HIV from entering the United States.

But the law was not implemented by the US Department of Health and Human Services, which regulates US immigration authorities in some instances.

Source-AFP
LIN