U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. will overturn a 22-year-old travel and immigration ban against people with HIV early next year.

The law has effectively kept out thousands of students, tourists and refugees and has 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 and researchers cannot enter the country.

The order will be finalized on Monday, Obama said, completing a process begun during the Bush administration.

The U.S. has been among a dozen countries that bar entry, based on HIV status, to travellers with visas or anyone seeking a green card.

The 11 other countries that ban HIV-positive travellers and immigrants are: Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Sudan, according to the advocacy group Immigration Equality.

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 U.S.

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

Obama said that by lifting the ban, the U.S. will take a step toward ending the stigma against people with HIV/AIDS, something he said has stopped people from getting tested and has helped spread the disease.