FDA to make it simpler for homosexual and bisexual males to donate blood : Photographs

An anticipated change in FDA coverage would make it simpler for males who’ve intercourse with males to donate blood.

Toby Talbot/AP

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Toby Talbot/AP

An anticipated change in FDA coverage would make it simpler for males who’ve intercourse with males to donate blood.

Toby Talbot/AP

The U.S. Meals and Drug Administration issued proposed steering Friday to ease restrictions on blood donations by males who’ve intercourse with males.

The change is predicted to take impact after a public remark interval.

The restrictions on donating blood date again to the early days of the AIDS epidemic and have been designed to guard the blood provide from HIV. Initially, homosexual and bisexual males have been fully prohibited from donating blood. Over time, the FDA relaxed the lifetime ban, however nonetheless stored in place some limits.

Below the present coverage — final up to date in 2020 — males who’ve intercourse with males can donate blood in the event that they have not had sexual contact with different males for 3 months.

The brand new proposed coverage would remove the time-based restrictions on males who’ve intercourse with males (and their feminine companions) and as an alternative assess potential donors’ eligibility primarily based on a collection of questions that assess their HIV threat, no matter gender. Anybody taking medicines to deal with or stop HIV, together with PrEP, wouldn’t be eligible.

The chance evaluation would come with questions on anal intercourse. Potential donors who’ve had anal intercourse within the final three months with a brand new sexual accomplice or multiple sexual accomplice wouldn’t be eligible to provide blood.

The modifications are geared toward addressing criticism that the present coverage is discriminatory and outdated, in addition to yet one more barrier to bolstering the nation’s blood provide. Blood banks already routinely display donated blood for HIV.

In crafting the brand new steering, the FDA has been trying to the outcomes of a examine of about 1,600 homosexual and bisexual males to develop screening questions that may determine potential donors who’re more than likely to be contaminated with HIV.

For a few years, the American Medical Affiliation, the American Purple Cross and LGBTQ+ advocacy teams have been pushing for a change to the federal guidelines on blood donations.

“It is a discriminatory coverage that assumes that HIV is a homosexual illness, and it is rather a lot not,” Tony Morrison from the group GLAAD, advised NPR in December. “That is what we now have been advocating for for a lot of, a few years.”