By Cécile D., Manon C. Published on March 15, 2022 at 10:56 am
The Ministry of Health announced that from March 16, 2022, all French people could donate blood, regardless of their sexual orientation. Homosexuals will no longer have to respect a period of abstinence of four months before a donation.
This is great news for blood donation, even though the reserves are at their lowest for months in France: from March 16, 2022, the blood donation will now be open to all French people, whatever their sexual orientationAnd this without conditions. On January 11, the Ministry of Health announced that the government was putting an end to this “discrimination“.
From mid-March 2022, there will be no “no more reference to sexual orientation” in the pre-donation questionnaires. “Everyone will come as one donor individual.“ announced Jerome Solomon, Director General of Health. A step forward that is part of the bioethics law, but also a “political will” of the Minister of Health.
“L’extreme vigilance of the health authorities allows an evolution of the conditions of access to blood donation. The level of risk (of transmission of HIV by transfusion) steadily declining for decades” he continued. A new criterion will nevertheless be added to the questionnaire: the donor must declare whether he takes a treatment for pre- or post-exposure HIV prophylaxis. If necessary, the donation will be postponed four months later.
“This is a big step forward since there is no longer any discrimination linked to sexual orientation. We will be vigilant on the way in which the question concerning preventive treatment against HIV will be formulated, knowing that almost all of the people who take it are gay men. We hope that this will not generate a new discrimination“, warns Lucile Jomat, president of the SOS Homophobia association, in the columns of West France.
For’French blood establishmentthe end of this discrimination means that the number of donors will be able to increase: good news, while the blood stocks are always too low. However, the institution does not expect a significant increase in the number of donors.
As a reminder, while several countries, like theSpain, Italy, Israel or even of englandhave already opened up blood donation to all their citizens, France took a first step in this direction in July 2016. Since that date, the gay men could, in fact, give their blood on the condition that they had had a period ofsexual abstinence one year – reduced to four months in 2019.
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