Mexico has lifted its ban on blood
donations from gay and bisexual men.
According to gay blog Blabbeando,
the procedural change first approved in August took effect on
Christmas Day.
For two decades gay and bisexual men
were explicitly banned from donating blood. Mexico cited an
“increased probability of acquiring HIV or hepatitis infection”
in instituting the ban.
The new rule bans people with hepatitis
or living with HIV and their partners and people who engage in “risky
sexual practices” from donating blood.
“Risky sexual practices” include
“contact or exchange of blood, sexual secretions or other bodily
secretions between someone who might have a transmittable disease and
areas of another person's body through which an infectious agent
might be able to penetrate.”
In 2010, a U.S. Health & Human
Services (HHS) committee voted to keep a ban on gay men from donating
blood. The FDA, which regulates the nation's blood supply, has so
far followed the panel's advice.
The agency currently imposes a lifetime
ban on men who have had a sexual relationship with another man since
1977 from donating blood. But the agency only excludes people who
have engaged in heterosexual sexual activity with a person known to
have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, for one year.
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry,
President Obama's Secretary of State nominee, recently opened a
new push to end America's ban.