Parliament Workbench

Petition · PE01643 · Session 5

Introduce individual risk-based blood donation in Scotland

Closed Submitted 2 Feb 2017 Health
Signatures
0
153 online signatures with a country
Comments
9
Considered
3 meetings
in the Official Report

What it asks

Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to change the regulations that prevent people within the LGBT+ community from donating blood and to replace it with an evidence based system that examines people on their individual risk to provide blood rather than their sexual orientation and gender.

What the petitioner did first

We have engaged with the office of Rona Mackay MSP, who led a parliamentary debate on lifitng the ban in 2016
- this includes a member of Rona Mackay's parliamentary staff attending meetings with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service on her behalf. As part of these meetings with the SNBTS we have spoken to senior representatives from the SNBTS about the reasons for the current policy and ways this could potentially be reformed in future.

Where it was considered

Official Report
  1. 27 Apr 2017
    Public Petitions Committee
    New Petitions
    1 mention
  2. 29 Jun 2017
    Public Petitions Committee
    Continued Petitions
    1 mention
  3. 26 Apr 2018
    Public Petitions Committee
    Continued Petitions
    1 mention

Signatures by country

153 online signatures
  1. Scotland105 68.6%
  2. United Kingdom41 26.8%
  3. England3 2%
  4. France1 0.7%
  5. United States1 0.7%
  6. Northern Ireland1 0.7%
  7. Afghanistan1 0.7%

Comments

9 comments, oldest first
  1. Alessio Gentile 8 Mar 2017
    So its fine for hetrosexuals who participate in anal sex to donate blood, but not gay men? This is absurd and is a ban based on bigotry, not science
  2. Lindsey Laing 8 Mar 2017
    End the ban!
  3. Aileen McKay 8 Mar 2017
    How is this not already a thing?
  4. John Michael Dargue 8 Mar 2017
    .
  5. Jess Mason 8 Mar 2017
    There are already vigorous checks in place to ensure 'clean' blood, sexual orientation and gender alone should have no impact on assessing risk. It would be nice to see Scotland take the lead in modernising blood donation regulations.
  6. Leeanne McSharry 8 Mar 2017
    It is the right thing to do
  7. Lisa Alexander 9 Mar 2017
    As it stands heterosexual people answering the questions truthfully may not be answering them accurately. They may be unaware of past sexual partners drug use or if they have had sex with the same sex but are answering the questions to the best of their knowledge. The blood is rigorously tested before use anyway so why are LGBT+ excluded? Back in the 80s it was thought only gay men carried and transmitted HIV. We now know this to be false. Carry out more stringent tests on samples where the donor has ticked "yes" don't exclude them completely
  8. Shona Hutchison 11 Mar 2017
    Bloods are checked anyway so why discriminate
  9. Anonymous 15 Mar 2017
    Both sexes, regardless of sexuality, are at equal risk of becoming infected with something that could later affect their ability to give blood if they have unprotected sex with an already infected partner. Despite this, certain members of the LGBT+ community are not allowed to donate even though these members are more than willing to donate blood.