Prostitutes told they are free to give blood
New rules will also make it easier for gay men to donate
‘Much easier to detect virus’
PROSTITUTES will legally be able to give blood in a shake-up of the donor system.
Sex workers were previously banned from donating blood over fears they could have HIV or sexually transmitted diseases.
But Education Secretary Justine Greening said at the weekend that they will be able to give blood three months after last having sex. The new rules will also reduce the time gay men have to wait to give blood after sexual activity from one year to three months.
The Government says it is changing the regulations following evidence that the accuracy of testing procedures had dramatically improved and that donors were good at complying with the rules.
The Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs, which recommended the changes, said they would also help more people give blood.
But they will be controversial and lead to concerns that people could be put at risk from tainted blood.
The issue is particularly controversial at the moment, as a public inquiry has just been launched into how thousands of haemophiliacs were infected with HIV and hepatitis in the 1980s. They were given contaminated stocks of the clotting agent Factor VIII, used to treat patients with haemophilia.
At the time the NHS was very low on supplies, so Factor VIII was imported from the US, where it had often been taken from high risk groups including drug addicts, prostitutes and prisoners who had donated their blood for cash.
However, scientists consulted by the Government said the changes would be safe. All blood that is donated in Britain undergoes a mandatory test for Hepatitis B and C, HIV and other viruses.
The new regulations will also apply to people who have sex with high-risk partners – for example, those who have been in parts of the globe where HIV is common.
Experts on the advisory committee said that three months is a comfortably long window for a virus or infection to appear and be picked up in the blood.
Professor James Neuberger, from the committee, said: ‘Technologies to pick up the presence of the virus have greatly improved, so we can now pick up viruses at a much earlier stage in the infection, and therefore it’s much easier to tell if a blood donor has the virus.’
The rule changes will come into force at blood donation centres in early 2018 in England.
The Government is also looking at relaxing the rules for people who have undergone acupuncture, piercing, tattooing and endoscopies. The regulations could also be changed for those with a history of non-prescribed injecting drug use. But these would also need changes to current EU legislation.
Charities welcomed the new rules. Alex Phillips, blood donations policy lead at the Terrence Higgins Trust, said the changes were a ‘victory for science over stigmatising assumptions’. She told the BBC: ‘The evidence suggests three months is the right amount of time.’
She added that the lifetime donation ban for sex industry workers was based on ‘preconceptions rather than evidence’.
Deborah Gold, chief executive of National Aids Trust, said the new rules were a ‘huge advance’ for gay and bisexual men.
Ethan Spibey, founder of the FreedomToDonate group that has campaigned for reform, said: ‘Today’s announcement from the Government marks a worldleading blood donation policy for gay and bisexual men and the other groups previously restricted.’ NHS Blood and Transplant said there was not currently a shortage of blood in the UK but 200,000 new donors were needed every year to replenish supplies.
It said there was a particular need for more people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities to give blood.
Miss Greening said: ‘ We will build on the significant progress we have made over the past 50 years, tackling some of the historic prejudices that still persist in our laws and giving LGBT people a real say on the issues affecting them.’ d.martin@dailymail.co.uk