The Victorian government will use Friday's Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Health Council meeting to call for the federal government and all states and territories to lift the “discriminatory” ban on men who have sex with men from donating blood.
Under current blood donor restrictions (also called deferrals), men who have had any sexual contact with another man in the previous 12 months are not allowed to donate. It’s one of 300 different reasons people in Australia are deferred from giving blood.
The rationale for the one year abstinence period is that HIV tests may not pick up recent infections and there could be up to a three month window after contraction before someone tests positive to HIV. Critics of the 12 month ban say it doesn't reflect the significant advances made in testing technology in recent years.
But heterosexual men, heterosexual women and gay women who have had multiple partners in the past year are still allowed to donate.
Victorian Health Minister Jill Hennessy told BuzzFeed News she believes this is a discriminatory policy borne out of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, and no longer reflects current evidence on risk.
“This policy doesn’t align with what we now know about how HIV is transmitted – it’s discriminatory and it’s outdated,” she said.
The minister also believes the policy doesn’t reflect the current view of the community, saying the “subsequent panic of the 1980s” around transmitted diseases is no longer accepted.
“This ban stops a particular group of people from doing something that could save lives – strangers or people they love alike.”
A review of the federal blood donor policy is due in 2018, but Hennessy will formally request at COAG for the review to happen in the next year with the aim of overturning the ban.
An independent review commissioned by the Red Cross in 2012 found sufficient evidence to support the reduction of the waiting time after sexual activity from 12 months to six months, saying shortening the time would not reduce safety or risk. The review had the backing of several of Australia's peak HIV/AIDS bodies.
This review (and two other reports on infectious diseases and donation) was not accepted by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), and nothing changed.
The TGA, which oversees blood policy, reasoned that reducing the waiting time could increase the risk of an infection being passed on to a blood recipient with no significant boost to donor numbers.
But the Victorian Labor government says that assumption isn’t backed up by data. It wants the TGA to reevaluate the science behind blood donation to align the best practice policy with contemporary evidence on risk, given that all donations are screened and tested for a number of infectious blood borne diseases.
Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Italy, Chile, Argentina and South Korea have no deferral periods for men who have sex with men.
The Red Cross Blood Service told BuzzFeed News it was disappointed with the TGA’s 2012 decision because it thought it had the data that proves the wait time could be safely reduced to six months.
The Red Cross and Hennessy agree a review process needs to take place before any decision is made.
“We know that the need for life saving blood donations never stops. Removing or reducing this ban will help more people save more lives,” she said.