President Obama announced that this week a 22-year-old travel and immigration ban against people with HIV will be lifted early next year.
 
Obama said that the order will be made final completing a process that had been flagged off during the Bush administration.
 
The U.S. is among a dozen countries which bar entries to travelers with visas or anyone seeking a green card based on their HIV status.
 
Before signing a bill to extend the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program Obama said, "If we want to be the global leader in combatting HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it."
 
The program began in 1990 and it provides medical care, medication and support services to about half a million people, most of whom have a low income.
 
An Indiana teenager had contracted AIDS through blood transfusion at age 13 after whom the bill is named. White went ahead and fought AIDS-related discrimination against him and others like him and helped in educating the country about the disease. He died in 1990 at the age of 18.
 
Jeanne White-Ginder, his mother, were present during the signing ceremony along with several members of Congress and HIV/AIDS activists.
 
The Department of Health and Human Services added this disease to the list of communicable diseases in 1987, which was a time of widespread fear and ignorance regarding HIV/AIDS. This prohibited a person infected with HIV in to the US territory.