Sexuality stops an individual from donating blood?

TANUSHREE PODDAR: NPnews24 online – Sexuality, an individuals sexual feeling towards any gender has always been the talk of the town. There have been various discriminations with people preferences of love be it gay, lesbian, bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual and so on. But, discrimination over blood is something disgraceful.
Globally, blood shortage is estimated to be approximately 40 million units every year with most of it in the developing countries.

Under current exclusion policies, a male potential donor who has had sex with a man in the previous 12 months is unable to give blood.

In spite of the need, certain groups of people are not allowed to donate blood in many countries. Gay and bisexual men are entirely prohibited from donating blood in countries such as Austria, Denmark and Greece.

In the US, men must abstain from gay sex from for one year before noting. Some countries require an abstention period of up to five years. Such policies originated on the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, when contaminated blood supplies caused 20,000 HV infections in America alone.

As a precaution, governments worldwide prohibited high-risk groups from donating blood which includes men who had sex with men as well as their female sexual partner.
LGBT organisations argue that such measures are homophobic and discriminatory as modern technologies allow for thorough blood testing before transfusion. They also argued that heterosexuals who engage in risky sexual behaviour do not face the same level of security. Many countries like Britain and Taiwan are now abandoning such bans.

According to a study, lifting the restriction on blood donations for sexuality active gay men would increase the blood supply by 2-4% in the country like Denmark and US.

There are fresh calls for an effective ban on homosexual men donating blood to be quashed in Australia, as “science moves on” from outdated and discriminatory policies. However, Australia is a world leader in blood testing and has not had a case of supply contamination in two decades.