Gay blood ban 'irrational and homophobic'
Gay rights campaigners have been trying to lift the ban on gay men donating blood for years
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Tuesday, 01, Dec 2009 12:01
By Emmeline Saunders
The ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood is "stereotyped, irrational, unscientific and homophobic", according to human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.
His remarks, to coincide with World Aids Day today, helped launch a draft policy to ease restrictions on blood donations.
Leukaemia charity the Anthony Nolan Trust has lifted its automatic ban on all donations from gay and bisexual men, "in contrast to the intransigence of the National Blood Service", Mr Tatchell said.
"The lifetime ban is backed by the government, which claims to oppose homophobic discrimination," he added.
"It is based on the stereotyped, irrational, bigoted and unscientific presumption that the blood of every man who has had oral or anal sex with another man – even just once 40 years ago with a condom – is unsafe. This is nonsense.
"The truth is that most gay and bisexual men do not have HIV and will never have HIV. Their blood is safe to donate."
Gay men in long-term monogamous relationships, celibate gay and bisexual men and those who last had gay sex in the 1960s, before the HIV pandemic began, are all banned from donating despite a shortfall in the amount of blood needed for emergencies.
Even gay men who have tested HIV-negative are banned for life.
New Zealand, Spain, Italy, Japan and Australia allow gay and bisexual men to donate in certain circumstances. Spain and Italy have found the number of HIV infections from contaminated blood has fallen since easing the restrictions was combined with an education programme.
This comes as the international development parliamentary committee released its report on the government's HIV/Aids strategy.
It contained criticisms of the lack of universal access to treatment, stating the 2010 will not be met.
The committee also hit out at the absence of a monitoring framework to scrutinise government money spent on the strategy and evaluate how effective it was.
The Department For International Development (Dfid) "still has no mechanisms in place to track the impact which its £6 billion funding for health systems will have specifically on HIV/AIDS care, despite this being one of the key elements of its Strategy," the report warned.
In addition, the working group put in charge of implementing Dfid's HIV/Aids strategy does not have sufficient authority, its aim is vague and its administrative support is inadequate, the committee said.