This week is ‘National Blood Week’ and with a 40% fall of young people – those under the age of 30 – giving blood, it is increasingly important for campaigns such as these to be shouted about.

You may have noticed over the past week a number of big retailers, including Green and Black’s, Odeon and Waterstones, have dropped the letters A, O and B from their marketing material, in line with the new NHS campaign #MissingType.

The NHS has released statistics saying it needs 200,000 new donors this year alone, of a variety of types, to just reach their minimum targets.

So with this in mind, why is it that we are preventing gay and bisexual men from donating?

When researching why this is the case I found a grand total of zero articles explaining this decision from a UK perspective.

But what I did find was the question, why are men who are in monogamous relationships not allowed to give blood?

The answer given by the Food and Drug Administration (USA) was “having had a low number of partners is known to decrease the risk of HIV infection… In the future, improved questionnaires may be helpful to better select safe donors. But this cannot be assumed without evidence.”

Right, so we can trust people sufficiently enough that if they walk into a blood donation centre to honestly answer whether they have had sex with a man in the past 12 months but when it comes to whether they are in a monogamous relationship they would have to provide proof? And only if you are a man may I add.

Anyway, back to the UK. So we have made some improvements towards non-discriminatory regulations when it comes to blood donation. As of 2011, the lifetime ban on donating blood for gay and bisexual men who have had sex with another man was lifted.

However, here in the UK, we still will not allow a man who is practising safe sex in a monogamous, homosexual relationship to donate blood. However an openly-promiscuous heterosexual male or female can. Makes sense, right?

According to statistics there is an increased proportion of HIV positive diagnoses in the gay community, which according to some statistics is a little over double that of the male heterosexual community, but how long does it take before HIV is present in the bloodstream?

The logical answer would surely be in line with the length of time before a gay/bisexual man can give blood. Wrong, it’s three months!

Although the presence of HIV is heightened in a gay or bisexual male population, we cannot ignore that according to the RA Trust, in 2013, 2,135 heterosexual people were newly diagnosed with HIV (men: 968, women: 1,135) in comparison to the homosexual community where 2,947 new diagnoses were found.

Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that HIV is exclusive to the gay/bisexual community.

Furthermore, let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that people do not lie about their sexual encounters. Every blood sample must be tested before being administered to any patient and this will include testing for the presence of HIV, AIDS, Syphilis, Chlamydia and countless others.

So why refuse something that could save someone’s life because it comes from an individual who is gay?

Although I am in full support of those who choose to donate blood, when there is potentially a shortage of 200,000 people, can we really afford to lose G and B from the donor list?

For more information:

Stonewall

Give Blood