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| President Obama signed a bill Friday to extend the Ryan White AIDS Care Act. (Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP) | |
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By LOU CHIBBARO JR, Washington Blade
Oct 30 2009, 2:10 PM |
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President Obama on Friday signed a bill extending for four years the Ryan White AIDS Care Act, the largest federal program providing assistance to low-income people with HIV or AIDS.
At a White House ceremony attended by members of Congress and AIDS activists, the president also announced that his administration would issue a final rule on Monday to eliminate the longstanding federal ban on allowing HIV positive visitors and immigrants from entering the country.
White House spokesperson Shin Inouye said the rule change would take effect Jan. 4.
Obama praised Congress for passing on a bipartisan basis the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009.
“[O]ver the past 19 years, this legislation has evolved from an emergency response into a comprehensive national program for the care and support of Americans living with HIV/AIDS,” Obama said. “And it provides life-saving medical services to more than half a million Americans every year, in every corner of the country.
“But let me be clear,” he said. “This is a battle that’s far from over, and it’s a battle that all of us need to do our part to join.”
Among the people to attend the bill signing ceremony was Jeanne White-Ginder, mother of Ryan White, the 13-year-old boy after whom the bill was named when Congress first passed it in 1990.
Obama noted that Ryan contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion in 1984 and encountered fear and hostility from parents of other children at his school in Indiana, forcing his family to move to another city. Ryan went on to speak publicly about the need for better understanding of HIV and how it’s transmitted.
“It would have been easy for Ryan and his family to stay quiet and to fight the illness in private,” he said. “But what Ryan showed was the same courage and strength that so many HIV-positive activists have shown over the years …”
Eight members of Congress also attended the event, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.).
Also present were veteran D.C. gay rights and AIDS activist Ernest Hopkins, who serves as policy chair for Communities Advocating for Emergency AIDS Release, a national organization; Frank Oldham, president and CEO of the National Association of People with AIDS; and Julie Scofield, executive director of the National Alliance of State & Territorial AIDS Directors.
Friday’s ceremony also included Obama’s announcement that federal officials would soon eliminate the longstanding federal ban on allowing HIV positive visitors and immigrants from entering the country.
He noted that Congress enacted the HIV travel ban 22 years ago “in a decision rooted in fear.”
“Now, we talk about reducing the stigma of this disease — yet we’ve treated a visitor living with it as a threat,” 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.”
He thanked Congress for passing and President George W. Bush for signing legislation last year to lift the legislative component of the ban.
“We are finishing the job,” he said, noting that Monday would see publication of the final rule to end the administrative component of the ban, which was put in place in the late 1980s by the Department of Health & Human Services.
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