Which countries prohibit gay or bisexual men from donating blood?

IN 1983 BRITAIN’S National Blood Transfusion Service released a pamphlet entitled “AIDS and how it concerns blood donors”. It described how the disease attacks the immune system and listed the groups most at risk, including gay men who had several sexual partners and intravenous drug users. Much was still unclear, though: the authors suspected that AIDS was caused by a virus but it was “not known for certain”; they reckoned it could “almost certainly” be passed on through blood and blood products. There was no screening that the service could provide to detect infections, so “until there is and more is known...donors are asked not to give blood if they think they may either have the disease or be at risk from it”. Restrictions have lingered for decades on blood donations from men who have sex with men. But on June 14th Britain switched to an individual risk-assessment system for all donors.

Even as scientists have learned more about HIV/AIDS—it is transmitted via bodily fluids and can afflict people of any sexuality—many countries have remained cautious about blood donation by gay and bisexual men. In the 1980s and 1990s, after thousands of people were infected with HIV via products made from donated blood, health services introduced formal policies that excluded donors who engaged in “high-risk behaviour”. These ranged from outright bans to “deferral periods” (ie, a man must refrain from having sex with another man for months, if not years, before donating). In effect, these deferral periods amount to bans by proxy. LGBT activists argue that such measures are homophobic.