File Photo The New Zealand Blood Service has accepted a recommendation to cut the stand down time for gay and bisexual men giving blood from five years to 12 months after they last had anal or oral sex with another man. A team invited by New Zealand Blood Service to carry out a review made cited the fact Australia’s twelve month stand-down for the past ten years, with no evidence of HIV transmission, in its reasons for the change. It said advances in donation testing and handling mean errors have now been virtually eliminated from the system, and the biggest risk of HIV entering the blood supply is during the very early ‘window period’ when it can’t yet be reliably detected. The review group said there had also apparently been a high level of compliance with the five year ban among gay and bi men. While it also considered a six month deferral period, this was dismissed “largely on the basis that there is no evidence of how it will work in practice, nor evidence from modelling, and there is less margin for error in misjudging time since last sexual contact.” The group also rejected a risk based assessment of actual sexual behaviour, as no research has been published in the area, and it would also mean gay and bi men would be hit with invasive in-depth questions about their sex lives. “There is evidence that some MSM who do not comply with donor deferral already find questions about sexual risk too personal,” the group said. “Furthermore, people are not reliable at assessing their own risk. A recent survey in New Zealand found that most MSM who had undiagnosed HIV infection believed that they were definitely or probably uninfected, and many had had a recent negative HIV test.” The New Zealand Blood Service has also accepted its recommendations to drop the stand-down period for sex workers and straight people from countries with high prevalence of HIV from five years to 12 months. It says it’s confident that the recommendations are based on good clinical evidence and that the changes will have no impact on the safety of blood and blood products provided to New Zealanders. Approval from Medsafe will be required before it’s able to implement the new criteria, something which is likely to mean the change will happen in early 2015.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 14th May 2014 - 9:03am