Reducing or ending deferral periods may help combat the stigma still associated with HIV and AIDS. It will also increase the amount of blood available for patients in need
IN 1983 BRITAIN’S National Blood Transfusion Service released a pamphlet entitled “AIDS and how it concerns blood donors”. It described how the disease attacks the immune system and listed the groups most at risk, including gay men who had several sexual partners and intravenous drug users.
Today the risk of transmitting HIV through the blood supply is negligible, because knowledge of HIV prevention, testing and management has deepened. People who have HIV but are on antiretroviral drugs cannot pass on the disease. Every blood donation is swiftly and accurately tested for the virus: the leading tests have a median “window period”—the time following the initial infection during which the virus may be undetectable—of only 18 days.
Many countries are relaxing their rules as a result. Brazil, Italy, Poland, Russia and South Africa, among others, have already done away with sexuality-based deferrals . Covid-19 has also increased the demand for blood products and encouraged countries to reassess their policies, or at least to shorten deferral periods. In America, where community blood-donation drives were cancelled during the first wave of the pandemic, the deferral period was dropped from 12 to three months in April 2020.
Reducing or ending deferral periods may help combat the stigma still associated with HIV and AIDS. Crucially, it will also increase the amount of blood available for patients in need. A study conducted in 2014 by the Williams Institute, a think-tank which studies sexual orientation and public policy, found that lifting bans and restrictions on men who have sex with men would increase the annual blood supply in America by between 2% and 4%.
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