The United States on Monday lifted the 22-year-old ban that prevented anyone with HIV or AIDS from entering the country.

President Barack Obama announced the change in October, calling the ban incompatible with the American goal to be a leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The country is scheduled to host a biannual global HIV/AIDS summit for the first time in 2012, according to the BBC. 

“The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s,” reports the BBC. “It put the U.S. in a group of just 12 countries, also including Libya and Saudi Arabia, that excluded anyone suffering from HIV/AIDS.”