"Although they are one of the most significant groups affected by this, there are also other people who are affected by the rules and who may wish to give blood. MSM aren't the only group affected by bans or deferrals for blood donation, explains Smithson. Other blood-borne infections have different window periods. With most HIV tests that you can take at a sexual health clinic, you can have a fairly accurate result after four weeks and a definitive result after six weeks. It meant that the rules were much fairer and more in line with the Equality Act." It wouldn't make any difference to the blood supply. "We felt that most infections would be picked up after a three-month period and therefore there was no reason to have this additional nine months whereby someone couldn't give blood. "You have to weigh up the balance between making sure that any risk to the blood supply is properly mitigated and making sure that people aren't being unfairly prevented from giving blood should they wish to," says Kat Smithson, director of policy at National AIDS Trust (NAT) which advocated for the change. Organisations who campaigned for the deferral period to be reduced argued that modern screening techniques made a lengthy period of abstinence unnecessary. If someone was to donate blood during this time, known as a window period, it would be possible to transmit an infection," they explain. "We have a three-month deferral because there is a small possibility the tests we carry out are not able to pick up recently acquired infections. At a population level, men who have sex with men have a higher risk of acquiring blood-borne infections," says a spokesperson for NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT). "Anyone can acquire a blood-borne virus or a sexually transmitted infection (STI), but some people have an increased risk of exposure. However, the new three-month deferral period still prevents many MSM from donating blood if they are having regular sex. The rules were again updated at the end of 2017 following years of campaigning by sexual health and LGBTQ+ organisations. In 2011, the ban was lifted and replaced by a twelve-month deferral period in which MSM had to abstain from sex to be allowed to donate blood. Once it was realised that these conditions could be passed on through blood, it was crucial that those who were most at risk of contracting the viruses, including gay and bisexual men, were not able to pass them on through blood donation since effective screening was not yet available.
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A lifetime blanket ban on blood donation for any man who had ever had sex with a man was introduced following a rise in HIV and hepatitis B cases in the 1970s and 1980s.