Gay men who have safe sex with multiple bed partners are also allowed to donate blood | Politics

Blood bank Sanquin will base its decision on whether or not someone may become a donor from January next year on a questionnaire about someone’s behaviour. The additional questionnaire should soon make it clear whether people who want to donate blood run an increased risk due to their behaviour. An important question can then be, for example, whether someone who has changing bed partners always uses a condom.

Minister Kuipers calls the new directive ‘an important change’, he said on the arrival of the weekly Council of Ministers. “I’m happy with it too. It means that blood donation becomes possible for gay men who have safe sex. I hope it will lead to a significant further increase in the number of people donating blood. That is extremely important.” He adds that this way doctors can still assure that donated blood is safe.

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Until 2015, men who had sex with other men were rated as a risk group and were therefore barred from donating blood. The reasoning used was that they have a statistically higher risk of infectious diseases such as HIV, the sexually transmitted virus that causes AIDS. This was experienced as discrimination by many gay men.

Previously, the rules were amended that men who had not had sex with a man for four months were allowed to donate blood, and after research last year, men in a ‘lasting monogamous relationship’ – i.e. a relationship longer than a year – were also given. added. So now the requirement is completely dropped, and a questionnaire about (sexual) behavior becomes the guiding principle in whether or not to exclude blood donation.

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