The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed this Friday to allow gay and bisexual men in monogamous unions to donate blood without a period of prior sexual abstinence, as has been the case until now.
In a statement, the FDA issued new guidelines that will allow this change as long as the donor has not had sexual intercourse with someone other than their regular partner in the past three months.
For years, the US prohibited men in same-sex relationships from donating blood; A measure that originated during the most difficult years of AIDS in the 1980s.
The FDA lifted that ban in 2015 but mandated that gay and bisexual men must abstain from sex for a year before donating blood.
According to The Wall Street Journal, during the COVID-19 pandemic and as a result of blood shortages, US officials reduced the period of sexual abstinence to less than three months.
The new guidelines propose subjecting all donors to the same prequalification questions, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.
“Maintaining a safe and adequate blood supply in America is paramount to the FDA, and this proposal for individual risk assessment, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, will allow us to continue using the best science to do so.” said the President of the FDA, Robert M. Calif.
The FDA has already moved ahead in November with studying an update to its recommendations, after funding a pilot study, called ADVANCE, that was carried out at community health care centers in different parts of the US to find It remains to be seen whether this change is possible or not.
The analysis was conducted with a sample of 2,000 gay and bisexual men from the country’s three major blood donation centers – Violent, OneBlood and the American Red Cross.
