3.Ĭanadian Blood Services had been signalling this submission is coming for several months, and it’s now up to Health Canada to review. Isra Levy, Canadian Blood Services' vice-president of medical affairs at the organization’s latest board meeting on Dec. “Sexual behaviour, not sexual orientation, determines the risk of sexual transmission of blood borne pathogens,” said Dr. It’s a move Canadian Blood Services says the evidence shows would allow more equity for donors while ensuring a safe supply. Should this submission be approved, when donors are screened before rolling up their sleeves, they’d instead be asked whether they have recently engaged in anal sex in the context of new or multiple sexual partners within a certain time frame. provided donors have not had a new sexual partner or their partner has not had sex with another partner in the last three months. Earlier this year a pilot project was approved for plasma donations at centres in Calgary, and London, Ont.
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“We aim to be an organization that is inclusive and welcoming to all potential donors with minimal restrictions… This would allow us to precisely and reliably identify those who may have a transfusion-transmissible infection, regardless of gender or sexual orientation,” reads an update on the donation agency’s website announcing the submission.Īs the blood donation policy currently stands, Canadian Blood Services prohibits gay and bisexual men who have sex with men, as well as certain trans people who have sex with men from donating blood unless they have been abstinent for three months. Instead, they want to ask all donors regardless of orientation if they’ve engaged in higher-risk sexual activities, ushering in a sexual behaviour-based screening model for all donors regardless of orientation. In the new request to overhaul the policy, Canadian Blood Services is asking its regulator to approve a change to its blood and plasma donor eligibility criteria that would allow blood donation clinics to stop asking gay and bisexual men as well as some other folks in the LGBTQ2S+ community whether they’ve had sex with a man.
In a move LGBTQ2S+ advocates say is long overdue, Canadian Blood Services submitted an application to Health Canada on Wednesday to end the blood ban.