New York: Two months after the Bush administration removed the statutory requirement that HIV be included in the list of communicable diseases, people suffering from AIDS are still not allowed to travel the United States, an activist group said.

A regulation under the The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which puts HIV in the list of communicable disease that prohibited infected people from entering the country unless they secure a waiver has yet not been changed, the group said. Instead the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Waiver Final Rule, a regulation that will streamline the issuance of certain short-term non-immigrant visas for non-US citizens who are HIV positive.

Advocates for ending the US travel ban are disappointed that the government was paying more attention on revising the visa waiver process than dropping the ban altogether, it said. "The White House and the US Congress have been very clear about the directive to change the outdated, stigmatising travel ban for HIV-positive people who want to visit the United States," said Dr Nils Daulaire, president of the Global Health Council. "But streamlining the visa process is not the same thing as dropping the ban," he added.

The United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Reauthorisation Act of 2008,which President George W Bush signed on July 30 this year removed the statutory requirement that mandated the inclusion of HIV on the list of diseases of public health significance. The legislation did not, however, automatically change the existing regulations, administered by HHS, that continue to list HIV as a "communicable disease," it said.

Source : PTI