At Héma-Québec, the same eligibility criteria now apply to all blood donors: a homosexual man who has had a sexual relationship with another man no longer has to abstain for three months.
Posted at 12:19 p.m
A “gender-neutral” questionnaire is presented to all candidates.
“We will assess risk at the sexual level based on individual behavior and not on group affiliation,” Laurent-Paul Ménard, spokesman for Héma-Québec, said on Sunday, describing the progress as “major”.
Anyone who has had a single sexual partner in the last three months can therefore qualify a priori to donate blood, regardless of their sexual orientation.
Individuals with two or more partners also qualify unless they have had anal sex with one of those individuals, regardless of sexual orientation. “There is an exclusion criterion for a period of three months from the date of the last anal intercourse,” says Laurent-Paul Ménard.
A detestable way of doing things
Previously, men who had sex with other men were automatically disqualified unless they waited three months before donating blood, a practice long decried.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Héma Quebec spokesman Laurent-Paul Ménard
Now we will assess the risk individually. So it is a person’s behavior that determines whether or not they can qualify, whether they are straight, homosexual or pansexual.
Laurent-Paul Ménard, spokesman for Héma-Québec
This measure had already been implemented in Quebec for plasma donations on October 6th. Héma-Québec is therefore expanding it for blood donations from Sunday.
How many people can now donate blood thanks to this change? “It doesn’t matter what’s going to happen, if there’s this progress, even if only on a societal level […]this is important news,” explains Laurent-Paul Ménard.
An ever shorter abstinence
Before 2013, men who have sex with men were simply forbidden from donating blood in Héma-Québec. Other relaxations were then made, including allowing those who have had a sexual relationship with another man to wait five years before being able to donate blood.
The duration of this abstinence was then increased to twelve months in 2016 and then to three months of abstinence in 2019.
In order to eliminate all criteria for donating blood, Laurent Paul-Ménard explains that there must be technological advances in “pathogen inactivation”, a method that removes any virus or disease from the samples collected.
The next relaxation that could be made to the Héma Québec criteria concerns the ban on people who stayed more than three months in England or six months in France between 1980 and 1996 due to the dominance of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease to donate blood for life, says Laurent Paul-Ménard.
“In terms of sexual risk, we’re at the forefront in Quebec, Canada and the UK,” he adds.