A employee with Vitalant places a needle on the arm of a blood donor as he prepares to donate blood throughout the Hoboken community Vitalant blood drive held at Hoboken Rec Center on June 25, 2021 in Hoboken, Recent Jersey.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
The American Red Cross is now allowing gay and bisexual men to donate blood without restrictions that specifically single out an individual’s sexual orientation or gender, the nonprofit group said Monday.
The Red Cross is implementing recent Food and Drug Administration screening guidelines that apply to all potential donors and are based on a person risk assessment. The Red Cross provides about 40% of the nation’s blood supply.
Under the brand new FDA guidelines, men in monogamous sexual relationships with other men are eligible to donate so long as they meet other screening criteria. Previously, men who had sex with men had to stay abstinent for 3 months before donating blood.
The three-month waiting period now applies to anyone, no matter sexual orientation or gender, who has had sex with a recent partner or multiple people and has also had anal sex.
The Red Cross said in a press release that the organization understands the waiting period based on a history of anal sex appears to unfairly goal gay and bisexual men.
The nonprofit group said it’s working with the FDA to make the blood-donation guidelines more inclusive.
The FDA in May dropped a virtually 40-year policy that had singled out men who’ve sex with men as high risk to the blood supply over concerns about HIV transmission.
Gay rights groups and leading medical associations had long opposed this policy as unnecessary, unsupported by the present science and discriminatory.
The American Medical Association criticized the FDA policy as unfairly singling out gay men fairly than an individual’s individual risk aspects. While gay men faced donation restrictions, even in the event that they had protected sex, straight men and ladies who had unprotected sex with multiple partners could still donate.
Within the wake of the AIDs crisis within the Eighties, the FDA instructed blood-donation agencies to not accept blood from men who’ve sex with men. This policy was in place from 1985 until 2015.
This policy was implemented at a time when HIV was poorly understood and remained in place whilst technology significantly improved to screen donations for blood-borne diseases, based on the AMA.
The FDA modified its guidelines in 2015 to permit men who’ve sex with men to donate blood, but they’d to stay abstinent for a 12 months before doing so. The agency shortened the abstinence period to a few months in 2020 amid a blood shortage throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Those taking oral medication to forestall HIV infection, called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, still should wait three months from their last dose to donate blood. People taking long-acting PrEP injections should wait two years before donating.
Anyone who has ever tested positive for HIV stays permanently barred from donating blood.
