U.S. President George W. Bush signed a bill that removes the visitor provision from U.S. immigration law, according to a report in the San Antonio Express News Sunday. The bill will give $48 billion to fight HIV and lift the ban on foreigners with HIV or AIDS from entering the United States.

Victoria Neilson, legal director of Immigration Equality, a New York advocacy group that is in favor of ending the ban said, "Today everyone knows that you can't get AIDS from sitting next to someone on an airplane or sharing a bathroom -- American policy should reflect this." All restrictions on visitors with HIV or AIDS have not been removed in the bill, the report said. The Department of Health and Human Services has a list of "communicable diseases of public health significance" which includes AIDS and HIV, along with tuberculosis, gonorrhea and leprosy. An HHS spokesman said administrators are still reviewing the new federal law.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that there were one million cases of HIV in the U.S. in 2003 though 25% of the people who were estimated to have the infection had never been tested. Ideally, the earlier the diagnosis is made and the treatment is started, the better are the survival chances. Unfortunately many people do not know they have the infection and therefore don’t get a test or treatment done. 38% of the AIDS diagnosis came just a year after testing positive for HIV in 2005 and treating AIDS is far more difficult than treating HIV. The CDC in September 2006 recommended a routine HIV testing for all patients who were between the ages of 13 to 64 to try to diagnose and treat the disease at the earliest.

The CDC report had some statistics on HIV in the U.S. It said that 71.5 million American adults (18 to 64 years old), or 40.4% of that population, have never been tested for HIV.

In 1987, only 6% of the population had ever been tested for HIV but by 2006, 40% of the population had been tested.