Now blood donors are asked: has your spouse ever had a love affair?

SCOTS who want to donate blood face being interrogated in minute detail about their sex lives.

Under a radical shake-up of transfusion rules, blood donors will be asked whether they have had unprotected sex and whether their partners could have been unfaithful.

Donors will also face questions about whether they have had ‘multiple partners’ recently or had drunken sex and cannot remember if condoms were used.

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, they could be banned from giving blood for up to a year.

The plan is aimed at halting the

‘It only takes one

mistake’

spread of diseases that can be spread through unprotected sex and passed through the blood supply from donors to patients.

But last night critics warned potential donors could see the questionnaires as an invasion of their privacy and be put off donating.

Around 155,000 Scots donate blood every year, giving more than 200,000 vital transfusions.

But experts are reconsidering the ways in which donors are assessed to see whether their blood might carry potentially deadly infections – including HIV and hepatitis. At present sexually-active gay men and those who have sex with prostitutes, drug addicts or people from Africa are deferred from giving blood to reduce the risk.

But under the new plans, all blood donors will face a much more detailed interrogation on their sex lives, designed to identify a far wider range of potential risks.

All blood donations are screened for disease before being used for transfusions. The purpose of the year-long deferral is to ensure that any possible diseases have had time to show up in the donor’s blood.

The proposals will be examined later this year by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and could change the way donors are screened.

The research was led by Dr Mike Kesby, an expert in health geography from the department of geography at St Andrews University.

He said the best way to reduce the risk of spreading diseases through blood supplies is not only to ask people whether they fall into a traditional risk group, but also to interrogate them about their sexual practices via a questionnaire.

Dr Kesby added: ‘Although certain groups are associated with a higher risk of sexually transmitted diseases, they do not represent all of the risk. In the rest of the population there is also risk and a good amount of that is getting into the blood supply.

‘Fortunately the system is good enough to ensure no one has been infected. But it only takes one mistake, and new diseases emerge all the time.

‘Imagine someone who was drunk and slept with someone without condoms at the weekend then with someone else during the week.

‘This is what we are wondering, whether there are simple ways to think about getting people to be honest.

‘At the moment people will be donating when they are at risk or carrying something, because they are not being interrogated about whether they have considered their partners.’

The plans are going out to consultation with patient groups to see which questions are acceptable.

But Margaret Watt, chairman of the Scotland Patients Association, said: ‘Potential donors might think twice if they think they are going to be asked personal questions like this, and if people don’t want to answer these questions the system will forfeit the blood.’

A spokesman for the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service said: ‘We will look forward to discussing the work of Dr Kesby at our Scotblood conference in June.’