The Red Cross estimates if the deferral period were lifted, an additional 360,000 men would donate blood. The Williams Institute estimates if these restrictions were lifted, the blood supply would increase by 2% to 4%-an average of 345,400 to 615,300 pints of blood annually. It is prudent to shift away from the current time-based blood donor eligibility criteria and toward a risk-based approach that considers current scientific evidence and allows the greatest number of people to donate blood safely. Hear more Tennessee Voices: Get the weekly opinion newsletter for insightful and thought provoking columns. Hear from Tennessee's Black voices: Get the weekly newsletter for powerful and critical thinking columns.įurther, this approach not only reinforces a number of stereotypes about the LGBTQ+ community and contributes to stigma, but it also fails to acknowledge HIV-risk factors that people who fall outside of this group may have. There is no single intervention that will immediately resolve the blood shortage however, many feel that lifting the restrictions on blood donations for gay and bisexual men is an easily actionable intervention which would address the blood shortage crisis by significantly increasing the number of blood donors.
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The critical shortage of blood across the country has renewed calls from politicians, researchers, health care professionals, and activists for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to lift restrictions on gay and bisexual men who wish to donate blood. In recent months the blood shortage has reached critical levels leading the American Red Cross to declare an emergency blood crisis for the first time.
Can gay men donate blood in the usa registration#
We recognise that many trans people may not consider this suitable, so as part of the FAIR changes, we have plans to require the assigned sex at birth only once at registration and not at every session, once our systems are configured to record this data. We therefore ask you to provide your assigned sex at birth during the confidential health check which all donors have before every donation. Some blood products are safe to manufacture from the blood of donors assigned male at birth but not from those assigned female at birth. This link goes to a different website which may not use the same language as this site. The JPAC guidelines give more information about donation if you are transgender. This is because the majority of transgender people undergo hormone replacement therapy which brings their haemoglobin levels in line with most cis people of the same gender. Haemoglobin testing is conducted in accordance with the gender with which you identify. Blood donation if you are transgenderĪs with all donors, a careful and sympathetic consideration of sexual risk factors is undertaken.
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NHS Blood and Transplant considers all donors to be the sex and/or gender that they identify as, including nonbinary, genderfluid and agender donors. All donors are addressed using the title and pronouns of their choice. Being transgender does not in any way prevent you from being able to donate.