Shaneel Lal: New Zealand Blood Service needs policy shift so gay men can donate blood

At present, NZBS’ donation policy is that men who have sex with men can only donate if they abstain from sex for three months.

My never-ending wait for New Zealand Blood Service’s reply to my questions has surprisingly come to an end.

For seven months, I asked NZBS why they don’t allow monogamous gay couples who have had the same partner for three months to donate blood.

The status quo is that men who have sex with men can only donate if they abstain from sex for three months.

Currently, it rules out gay men in long-standing monogamous relationships with no risk of transmitting infectious diseases, including HIV and Hepatitis B and C.

In a request to the Ministry of Health via the Official Information Act – the NZBS said they understand “that this deferral is frustrating to many, as it does not take into account the variety of sexual risk profiles for blood-borne viruses among potential donors”.

It is helpful, at most, that NZBS recognises the policy is not fit for purpose.

Once, NZBS said that three months is the maximum amount of time a person must live with HIV before its tests pick up the disease. That means that if neither half of a monogamous couple tests positive three months in, they didn’t have HIV before the relationship, and can safely donate blood.

NZBS says that the three-month deferral is in place “to allow a very high likelihood that any donation from a donor with early HIV will be detected by our screening tests”.

However, England, Scotland, Wales, and Canada allow monogamous gay couples who have only had sex with each other for the last three months to donate blood. Those countries have experienced no problems since the change. Earlier in the year, the Food and Drug Administration in the United States made the same proposal for new blood donation guidelines.

New Zealand isn’t special.

NZBS says that countries who have removed the deferral period for men who have sex with other men “in favour of a more individualised donor behaviour criteria do not ask donors if they are in a committed/monogamous relationship. The question they ask donors is: Have you had sex with more than one person, or a new person, in the last three months?”

It is unclear why NZBS does not already use an individualised risk assessment for gay men. International practice shows that it is safe to do so. NZBS has expressed that “the issue of assessing donors according to an individualised risk assessment, that could enable potential donors with a lower risk profile for blood-borne viruses to donate, is important”.

It hopes that the results from its Sex and Prevention of Transmission Study (SPOTS) will “provide vital, evidence-based data specific to New Zealand that can be utilised, in conjunction with scientific data that becomes available from international blood services, to support an individualised risk assessment approach”.

The study is an “important first step towards gaining a much better understanding of safe sex practices in Aotearoa in the [men who have sex with men] community and an opportunity to help effect change”, it added.

Any changes to NZBS’ blood donation policies need to be approved by Medsafe. Medsafe appears to be open to NZBS making a proposal, saying should it want to apply for a change to the deferral criteria, it could submit a “change medicine notification to Medsafe, with supporting scientific evidence”.

If the stars align, and I strongly believe they will, SPOTS will provide NZBS with the necessary scientific evidence to make a proposal to Medsafe to utilise an individualised risk assessment for gay men wanting to donate blood.

Shaneel Shavneel Lal (they/them) was instrumental in the bill to ban conversion therapy in New Zealand. They are a student, model and influencer.