Blood-donation deferral period drops to 3 months for gay, bisexual men

Theblood-donation deferralperiod for gay and bisexual male donors is dropping from one year to three months in Canada.

Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor made the announcement on Parliament Hillin a move that was foreshadowed late last year.

"Today, we're taking a major step towards a fair, evidence-based blood-donation system by reducing the deferral period to three months and moving towards behavioural-based screening." said Petitpas Taylor.

The new guidelinemeans that a gay or bisexual man has to abstain from sex with other men for three months before he can donate blood.

The announcement marks the latest change in the Health Canada andCanadian Blood Services (CBS) policy, which was introduced in 1992 as an outright ban on blood donation by gay and bisexual men after thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and hepatitisCthrough tainted blood products.

The lifetime ban was lifted in 2013when Canada moved to a policy that allowed donations from men who said they had abstained from sex with other men for five years.In 2016, the deferral period was reduced to one year.

The blanket deferral for men who have sex with menhas been criticized by a number of groups and individuals, including lawyer Christopher Karas, whofiled a human rights complaint about the matter in 2016.

Karas said Wednesday the news is nothing to cheer about, because the underlying premise of CBS donor screeningis fundamentally flawed.

"We've seen incremental steps that, frankly, don't get to the heart of the matter, which is that these policies are not based on behaviour. Thesepoliciestargetgroups anddon't allow those groups to donate bloodfor discriminatory reasons," said Karas.

Karas points to the CBSblood-donation questionnaire, which asks under the heading "lifestyle" if apotential male blood donor has had sex with another man.

"I find that very discriminatory and homophobic," he said.

Independent watchdog group BloodWatch.org said although it supports Wednesday's announcement, it's also asking Health Canada and CBS tochange the donor-screening process.

"Our perspective is that if you have a behaviour-based donor deferral in place, that is the safest way to operate a public health system," said BloodWatch.org executive director Kat Lanteigne.

"It would change what currently happens, in that there wouldn't be a blanket ban on [men who have sex with men] and a blanket deferral of three months. It would mean that any individualwhether they are MSM[men who have sex with men] or trans[transgender] or a single woman or a married persongets asked the same questions and are deferred based on their behaviour."

CBS considers men who have sex with men a high-risk group, as they account for the largest proportion of new HIV infections reported in Canada.

In 2017,MSMaccounted for 46.4 per cent of the 2,402 new HIV cases reported in Canada.