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New Zealand did the same in December and Australia followed suit in January. In America, where community blood-donation drives were cancelled during the first wave of the pandemic, the deferral period was dropped from 12 to three months in April 2020. Covid-19 has also increased the demand for blood products and encouraged countries to reassess their policies, or at least to shorten deferral periods. Brazil, Italy, Poland, Russia and South Africa, among others, have already done away with sexuality-based deferrals (see map). Many countries are relaxing their rules as a result. Every blood donation is swiftly and accurately tested for the virus: the leading tests have a median “window period”-the time following the initial infection during which the virus may be undetectable-of only 18 days. People who have HIV but are on antiretroviral drugs cannot pass on the disease. Today the risk of transmitting HIV through the blood supply is negligible, because knowledge of HIV prevention, testing and management has deepened. LGBT activists argue that such measures are homophobic.
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In effect, these deferral periods amount to bans by proxy. These ranged from outright bans to “deferral periods” (ie, a man must refrain from having sex with another man for months, if not years, before donating). In the 1980s and 1990s, after thousands of people were infected with HIV via products made from donated blood, health services introduced formal policies that excluded donors who engaged in “high-risk behaviour”. But on June 14th Britain switched to an individual risk-assessment system for all donors.Įven as scientists have learned more about HIV/AIDS-it is transmitted via bodily fluids and can afflict people of any sexuality-many countries have remained cautious about blood donation by gay and bisexual men. Restrictions have lingered for decades on blood donations from men who have sex with men. There was no screening that the service could provide to detect infections, so “until there is and more is known.donors are asked not to give blood if they think they may either have the disease or be at risk from it”. Much was still unclear, though: the authors suspected that AIDS was caused by a virus but it was “not known for certain” they reckoned it could “almost certainly” be passed on through blood and blood products. It described how the disease attacks the immune system and listed the groups most at risk, including gay men who had several sexual partners and intravenous drug users. IN 1983 BRITAIN’S National Blood Transfusion Service released a pamphlet entitled “AIDS and how it concerns blood donors”.