Blood service reassures public - Saturday Star

Blood service reassures public
January 21 2006 at 03:22PM
By Christina Gallagher

The South African Blood Service (SANBS) said on Friday it still considers a gay and lesbian organisation's claim that some of its members donated blood without disclosing their sexual status a threat.

This week SANBS publicity manager Gail Nothard said: "It hasn't been confirmed, so we still have to consider it a threat unless we know for absolutely sure. We can't disregard it as a hoax. We would never disregard a claim that we can't confirm."

Nothard said that the SANBS received 800 000 donations each year. Each donation is tested for both strains of the HIV virus, Hepatitis B and C, and Syphilis. Of those donations, an average of 1 200 donations collected nationally test positive for these viruses.

She said that, in total, approximately 16 000 donations are rejected for a variety of reasons, which include "quality failures, low volumes, confirmed viral positive results, and false positive results".

On Friday, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) said that gay men could not be excluded from donating blood based upon "identity or status, but rather on the basis of epidemiological data".

The SAHRC also said it had met with the SANBS previously to discuss the possibility of the organisation undertaking an epidemiological study, along with the Medical Research Council and the Council for Scientific Industrial Research (CSIR), to determine if homosexuals were a high-risk group for contracting HIV in South Africa.

"It was suggested that the study be held within the realm of the SANBS operation. The SANBS opposed the study within its realm and the negotiation broke down," the SAHRC said.

The SANBS remained firm in its stance that it did not exclude gay men from donating blood.

"We do accept gay men who do not practice sex."

She said the SANBS has just received research about the gay male community in South Africa, which it will examine in the next few months.

"SANBS has always been open to review policies based on sound new medical and statistical evidence," she said.

For now the SANBS still goes by available international data in order to "ensure the safety of the blood supply," Nothard said. "If we don't do that and someone gets HIV from a blood transfusion, we can be sued".

After discussions with the department of health last year when the SANBS was asked to change its blood exclusion policy based upon information that some races were perceived as a higher risk for HIV contraction than others, the SANBS introduced a new blood-screening process called Nucleic acid Amplification Testing (NAT).

SANBS spokersperson Ianthe Exall said the test amplified the DNA of the virus, which means it can be detected earlier than previous tests and has reduced the window period to around 11 days.

The NAT test added R135 to the cost of testing a unit of blood. Nothard said that it was still too early to tell if the new test could detect more instances of HIV in the blood of donors.

"In a year we will know if we find more HIV this way and what it brings the window period down to."

Meanwhile, David Baxter, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance spokesperson who claimed last week that some members who may have been HIV positive had donated blood to SANBS centres across the country, said he was content with the SAHRC policy of non-exclusion of gay men from donating blood.

Baxter said he would continue to urge the organisation's members to donate blood without disclosing their sexual orientation until the SANBS change a donor questionnaire question which asks whether or not the male donor has engaged in sex with another man or men in the last five years.

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