AIDS // Current

Obama lifts ban on US entry for those with HIV

President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. will overturn a 22-year-old travel and... more

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Barack Obama lifts HIV/AIDS US travel ban

Barack Obama said that a US travel ban against people infected with the HIV virus will be overturned early next year.

The order will be completed on Monday, Obama said, finishing a process begun during the administration of George Bush.

The United States is one of about a dozen countries that bar entry to travellers based on their HIV status. The ban has been in place for more than 20 years. Obama said it will be lifted just after the new year, after a waiting period of about 60 days.

"If we want to be a global leader in combating HIV/Aids, we need to act like it," Obama said at the White House before signing a bill to extend the Ryan White HIV/Aids programme. Begun in 1990, the program provides medical care, medication and support services to about half a million Americans with HIV or Aids, mostly low-income people.

The bill is named for an teenager who contracted Aids through a blood transfusion at age 13. Ryan White went on to fight Aids-related discrimination against him and others like him in the late 1980s and to help educate Americans about the disease. He died in April 1990 aged 18.

His mother, Jeanne White-Ginder, attended the signing ceremony, as did several members of Congress and HIV/Aids activists.

In 1987, at a time of widespread fear and ignorance about HIV, the department of health and human services added the disease to the list of communicable diseases that disqualified a person from entering the United States.

The department tried in 1991 to reverse its decision but was opposed by Congress, which in 1993 went the other way and made HIV infection the only medical condition explicitly listed under immigration law as grounds for inadmissibility to the country.

The law effectively has kept out thousands of students, tourists and refugees and complicated the adoption of children with HIV. No major international Aids conference has been held in the United States since 1993 because HIV-positive activists or researchers could not enter the country.

Obama said lifting the ban "is a step that will save lives" by encouraging people to get tested and to get treatment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/30/obama-ends-hiv-travel-banBarack Obama said that a US travel ban against people infected with the HIV virus will... more

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Obama Signs Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act and Announces End of HIV Travel Ban

President Obama announced an end to the HIV Travel and Immigration Ban during the... more

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50 Essential Open Courseware Classes & Research Papers to Learn About HIV & AIDS

One of the major health issues facing the world — especially the developing world... more

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First HIV vaccine trial success confirmed

The first HIV vaccine to be called a success has stood up to scrutiny after further analysis of the data was presented today in Paris, France.

However, the new analysis also confirms that the optimistic claims, first made in September and viewed sceptically at the time, are indeed very modest.

Last month's announcement of success (PDF) was made by researchers from the US Military HIV Research Program (MHRP). They reported that their vaccine reduced the risk of infection by about 31 per cent in a trial in Thailand.

But it was not clear that the vaccine offered any protection because the result was based on very few cases: 51 of 8197 vaccinated individuals became infected with HIV compared with 74 of 8198 unvaccinated people, a difference of just 23.
Bonus data

Today, at the AIDS Vaccine 2009 meeting in Paris, MHRP researchers presented the analysis underlying the result that they announced a month ago, plus two additional analyses of the raw data (PDF).

These new analyses included people who had been excluded from the research results, such as those who did not take the six vaccine shots in the correct order. In neither was the trend statistically significant.

After hearing the new results, Seth Berkley, chief executive of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, said, "Certainly, there's some kind of signal there," but added, "It's a modest effect."

He also says that the new results are interesting because they give novel insights into how the vaccine works over time.
Early effect

The risks of infection in the vaccinated group were reduced by around 60 per cent within a year, but by 30 months after vaccination the protective effect was only 36 per cent. This resulted in a 31 per cent figure overall.

"It looked like there's an early effect that wanes with time," said Berkley. "It may be that the vaccine generates only weak antibodies against HIV, and these are only effective early on."

Berkley says that further investigation of the mechanisms by which the vaccine worked would provide powerful new knowledge to guide selection of new, more potent vaccines.The first HIV vaccine to be called a success has stood up to scrutiny after further... more