On Monday, 14th December 2020, The British Government announced that it would be letting go of its ban on blood donation by gay and bisexual men. Prior to this, gay and bisexual men have been considered too risky to donate and have not been allowed to donate blood unless they’ve abstained from sex for three months.
In 1985, the U.K. established a lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men. From 2011, however, in most parts of the U.K., men who have sex with men were permitted to donate after 12 months of abstinence. The deferral period got changed to 3 months in 2017.
In the new blood donation guidelines, which the government has described as a “landmark change”, men who have sex with men and are in a monogamous long-term relationship, or have been with their sexual partner for over three months, will be able to donate blood at any time from summer 2021. Therefore, anyone who has the same sexual partner for more than three months will now be eligible to donate, if there is no known exposure to sexually transmitted infections or use of anti-HIV drugs like PreP or PEP.
“Our first priority must always be to ensure the safety of the blood supply in the UK. We welcome this move to a more individualised risk assessment approach for any potential donor, which both maximises the number of people who can donate while ensuring the blood supply is safe. Eligibility to donate blood will now be based on the behaviours identified as being at highest risk of infection, rather than gender or sexuality. This means the removal of the three month deferral period for gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men,” Dr Michael Brady, Medical Director at Terrence Higgins Trust, told GayTimes.
Dr. Brady believes that this is just the beginning and there is more work to be done. “There is certainly more work to do and we will continue to work to ensure that our blood donation service is inclusive, evidence-based and both maximises the numbers who can donate while ensuring our blood supply is safe.”
“Simply being a man who has sex with men is not a good enough reason to exclude someone from donating blood,” Ethan Spibey, founder of FreedomToDonate, told the BBC.
