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“I felt stigmatized, and I also felt outraged that such a refusal to adapt to the urgent circumstances of this crisis would result in less blood being available to those who need it most,” Mendez said. Mendez said the receptionist told him the clinic wasn’t yet complying with the new FDA guidance. But when he got there, he was turned away, much like Estok.
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On the day the guidance was published, Mendez immediately made an appointment at the UCI Health Blood Donor Center in Orange, California. “I’ve been waiting to donate blood for my entire adult life, and the current blood shortage caused by Covid-19 made that desire that much more urgent,” he said. It said it is “pleased with this new guidance” and “working to implement the changes as quickly as possible”.įor some men who are suddenly eligible, that isn’t quick enough.īrennon Mendez, a 24-year-old student at Yale Law School, felt “ecstatic” after he heard about the FDA update. The American Red Cross similarly said it was “working aggressively to implement the many eligibility changes outlined by the FDA as soon as possible”, but had not done so yet.Ī spokesperson for the New York Blood Center did not respond specifically to Estok’s allegations of being treated as “less than” but echoed its industry peers. “I am not aware of any blood center who has made any changes yet.
#Can gay men donate blood california update
Kate Fry, the chief executive at America’s Blood Centers, estimated it will take two to three months, on average, for blood centers to update their practices and welcome gay and bisexual men who meet the new criteria.įry cited a slew of upgrades – to the computer system, training processes, manuals, donor education items and a universal donor history questionnaire – that “unfortunately just does take some time” to incorporate. However, administrative conflicts and hurdles have meant most blood banks haven’t yet applied the revision, despite the FDA’s go-ahead. If the recommendations are implemented early, the FDA said, they could “help to address” the US’s “significant shortage” in blood amid a crisis. Under pressure from lawmakers and in light of the coronavirus pandemic, which has ravaged parts of the US and forced thousands of blood drives to cancel, the FDA fast-tracked new guidance in early April to further ease the restriction to three months. “It’s been a very long struggle to try to get them to just simply adapt and include the current science in the policy,” said Scott Schoettes, counsel and HIV project director at Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization. In 2015, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relaxed its guidance but still required men to abstain from sex with another man for at least a year before they could give blood, a policy that the the American Public Health Association said was “not based in science”. Gay and bisexual men in the US had been subject to blanket bans on donating blood since Aids devastated the LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s, because of what health experts have called “ discriminatory practices based on outdated stereotypes”. “I was just so angry and so embarrassed at the way that that was handled, and I just didn’t see it coming,” he said. He finally attended an appointment last week, but as soon as a worker there learned he was gay, her face turned cold.