U.K. to Lift Ban on Gay Blood Donors

The U.K. joins South Africa, Switzerland, Japan, and Australia by dropping a decades-old ban on gay men donating blood. Will Canada follow?

The United Kingdom's blood donor agency will drop its across-the-board ban on gay men donating blood this November, just as the two Canadian blood services face increasing pressure to do the same here. The U.K.'s National Blood Service will now allow men who have sex with other men donate blood, so long as they haven't had sex within the last 12 months. That's the accepted time period also in place in Japan, Australia, and South Africa, while in Canada, the blanket ban persists. Canadian Blood Services and Hema-Quebec, the twin agencies here, have been flirting with the idea of dropping their ban, as Health Canada is apparently reviewing the safety protocols for blood donation. The bans were put in place in the 1980s in response to the AIDS epidemic that swept through the gay community.