That was later eased to the current three month period. The donation ban was initially for life, but that policy was first eased in 2013, when men who had sex with men were allowed to donate after being abstinent for five years. It came in the wake of a 1980s public health scandal where some 2,000 people were infected with HIV and up to 60,000 with Hepatitis C from tainted blood donations amid testing failures. The policy change comes after Canadian Blood Services, which collects blood and blood product donations across most of the country, submitted a request last year to scrap the rule to Health Canada, which announced it had approved it on Thursday.Ĭanada's ban was first put in place in 1992 as a measure to prevent HIV from entering the blood supply.
