Blood donations still months away, says Blood Bank of Delmarva on FDA reversal of gay donor ban

DELMARVA – The blood bank of Delmarva is celebrating the reversal of a decades-long policy banning gay and bisexual men from donating blood in the US.

Blood Bank of Delmarva Communication Director Anthony Prado tells us the newly updated guidance would have blood organizations perform an individual risk assessment on anyone coming in and would no longer have an outright ban on sexually active gay and bisexual men.

He tells us despite that rollback it will still mean months of development of new guidelines, and unfortunately, that means people will still be barred from donating during the organization’s busiest season of summer through fall.

“There are questions that need to be revised, added and, you know, our standard operating procedures, the so-called SOPs, are going to have to be updated. There’s going to be staff training involved and the estimate I heard was autumn would be the time – specifically the month of November – possibly when we would be in a position to roll this out,” he said.

He tells us this is a shift that has already seen great success in the UK and Canada and they are excited to finally have this restriction out of the way and get more blood to those who need it across Delmarva.