The New York Blood Center is gradually growing its donor base, a year after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended that blood centers update their donor screening protocols. The shift is intended to eliminate practices that have been widely considered discriminatory to the LGBTQ+ community.
The recommendations went into effect in May of last year, but some advocates say that the policy misses the mark, and that biased screening practices are still blocking blood donations from gay and bisexual men, as well as other members of the queer community.
The new protocols faced initial administrative hurdles, as the shift required different questionnaires that asked donors about their sexual activity and health. The agency in 2020 recommended that people who identify as men who have sex with men abstain from sex for three months before giving blood.
The blood center had successfully trained its staff to accommodate the new population of donor candidates by the end of September, according to Andrea Cefarelli, senior vice president of corporate communications at New York Blood Center enterprises.
The shift has yielded 240 new donors who had previously not been eligible to donate blood, Cefarelli said, noting that many donors make a lifetime commitment and are able to donate up to five times per year.
The New York Blood Center, which “manufactures” the blood it collects and sells the product to hospitals, made $550 million in revenue in 2022, the latest year for which public data is available. Its CEO, Christopher Hillyer, was compensated $1.9 million that year, according to tax documents.
But some say that the updated FDA has not clearly communicated the caveats of the new policy, leading to alienating experiences where some who intend to donate are turned away.
“It’s perhaps an even more horrible experience than just knowing that you’re not allowed to donate,” Jason Cianciotto, vice president of communications and policy at GMHC, a nonprofit that advocates for issues around HIV/AIDS said.
The policy requires people who have new sex partners, multiple sex partners or who participate in anal sex to be deferred. The agency also recommends that people who take medications to prevent or treat HIV, such as pre-exposure prophylaxis, wait to donate. Sometimes the wait can exceed a year, according to Cianciotto.
“It’s a policy that enables monogamous [men who have sex with men] who are not on PrEP to donate,” he said. “If you were to apply that to the heterosexual population, imagine how many people would be up in arms.”
While the blood center has rebounded from losses during the pandemic, the aging population increases demand for blood, Cefarelli said, adding that the additional criteria changes in donor eligibility from the FDA are welcome. In New York, about 75,000 annual donations come from high school students, a source that was heavily impacted by remote learning, according to Cefarelli.
Earlier this week, the blood center declared a state of emergency, its second of the year. The region currently has two days of blood supply of types O- and B-, according to Cefarelli, below the ideal supply of five to seven days.
Amanda Glodowski , 2024-06-07 11:33:03
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