ORLANDO – A recent push for blood donations has raised some concerns in the gay community. On the days following June 12, people lined up around blocks to help save those who were not among the 49 killed onsite. Last week, OneBlood – Central Florida’s blood bank – began using images of five Pulse survivors in a campaign to draw in more blood. The problem? Gay men are effectively forbidden from donating blood by the Food and Drug Administration, despite the fact that all donations are carefully screened. That should not diminish the importance of blood resources, OneBlood says.
“The week of the Pulse tragedy OneBlood collected nearly 28,500 units of blood,” OneBlood vice president of marketing and communications Susan Forbes says in an email. “It is an unprecedented amount of blood to be collected in such a short amount of time. That said, ten days after the tragedy, 85 percent of what we collected had already been distributed to our hospital partners. As quickly as blood is donated it is tested, processed and distributed to hospitals. Usually within 2-3 days of a person donating their blood, it will be sent to a hospital. The turnaround is that quick, the need is constant.”
But the acceptance of blood from gay men has not been. Some people Watermark has spoken to have admitted to lying about either their orientation or their sexual activity in order to help those dying in the wake of the June 12 massacre at Pulse. Though, to be fair, some members of the OneBlood staff are LGBTQ, and it is a federal mandate, one that has been unsuccessfully challenged in previous years.
“The deferral policy does not exclude all members of the LGBT community. The deferral is specific to male sex with males in the past 12 months,” Forbes says. “The survivors that are sharing their stories with OneBlood understand the restrictions which are mandated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). At the same time, they are also extremely grateful to blood donors because they saved their lives. When they learned of the vital role that blood donors played in their survival, they were eager to lend their voices to help encourage people who are eligible to donate blood to do so on a consistent basis and not to wait for a tragedy to donate.”
And, as Forbes points out, times are incrementally changing. OneBlood is among the nation’s blood centers that is progressing with the times.
“In 2015, the FDA lifted its lifetime ban (from 1977) on men who have sex with men (known as MSM) and moved to a one year deferral policy. OneBlood supports that change and has implemented the new policy. In addition, OneBlood is one of four large blood centers who have received a multi-center research agreement to identify and further characterize risk factors in blood donors who are infected with HIV and hepatitis. This research will permit an effective and focused assessment of risk for all potential blood donors, regardless of their sexual orientation.”
In the meantime, OneBlood will maintain a presence at the scheduled Pulse memorials around June 12.
