The American Red Cross, following a recent decision by the health authorities, will begin accepting blood donations from gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships on Monday, August 7, 2023 to abstain from sex without prior warning.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines aboutoverturn decades of restrictions to protect blood supplies from HIV. The organization announced plans for relevant legislative changes in January this year. Updated guidelines remove the requirement that men who have sex with men abstain from sex for three months before donating blood.
Instead, all potential donors, regardless of sexual orientation or gender, will be screened using a new questionnaire that assesses individual risks of HIV infection based on sexual behavior, recent partners and other factors.
Potential donors who have reported having anal sex with new partners within the last three months will be temporarily suspended from donating (postponing blood donation to a later date). “The implementation of these recommendations will be a significant milestone for the agency and the LGBTI+ community,” said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Biological Therapy Center.
Groups by gay rights activists have long opposed general restrictions on who can donate blood, stating that this in itself is discrimination. Medical societies, including the American Medical Association, have also stated that such exemptions are unnecessary given the advances in blood testing.
Anyone who has ever tested positive for HIV is still not eligible to donate blood. Those taking HIV prevention pills through sex will continue to be excluded for three months after their last dose. The FDA has noted that drugs known as PrEP may delay detection of the virus in screening tests.
The FDA sets requirements and procedures for US blood banks. All potential donors answer questions about their sexual history, injecting drug use and any recent interventions (tattoos or piercings), as well as other factors that may contribute to the spread of blood-borne infections. Then the donated blood is tested for HIV, hepatitis C, syphilis and other infectious diseases.
In 2015 FDA lifted a lifetime ban on blood donation from men who practice same-sex sex and replaced his demand to abstain from intimate life for one year. Then in 2020 the organization reduced the period of abstinence to three months, after a sharp drop in blood supplies in medical facilities during the coronavirus pandemic.
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