Gay organisation launches blood war - Saturday Star

Gay organisation launches blood war
January 14 2006 at 10:42AM

By Christina Gallagher

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance (GLA) on Friday declared war on the South African National Blood Service (SANBS), as scores of its members turned up to donate blood under false pretences.

And, a shocking 65 percent of the gay men who donated blood without disclosing their sexual preference are unsure whether they are HIV- positive.

On Friday, about 300 men complied with a plea by the GLA to its claimed 100 000 male members to donate blood to SANBS centres across the country, but not to disclose their sexual orientation.

The request is a part of an ongoing national campaign to protest the SANBS policy of excluding men who engage in sexual activity with other men from donating blood.

David Baxter, media director for GLA, said on Friday that 65 percent of the members of GLA who had donated blood were unsure whether they were HIV-positive. He later said one of the donors had full-blown Aids.

Gail Nuthard, publicity manager for SANBS, phoned Baxter and asked him to tell the members who lied about their sexual orientation and/or who were unsure of their HIV status to phone the centre.

Donors receive an "honesty card" asking them to phone within 48 hours after donating blood if they consider their donation unusable. If they do phone the "unit of blood is withdrawn from the system", she said.

Baxter, who said this was the GLA's most successful campaign ever, declined to heed the request.

This effectively means that, although the blood will be screened and although the "window period" for identification of the HIV and other viruses is shorter now than in the past, there is a chance that infected blood could enter the medical system.

Nuthard said blood donations are separated into plasma and red blood cells. It is the red blood cells which carry the HIV virus. She said that usually, "unless there is a terrible shortage", the red cells of first blood donors would not be used.

Baxter, though, took a hard-line stance: "Normal communication (about this issue) with the SANBS did not work. "We got people to donate and now we can't turn around and tell people to phone. It would be the most stupid thing to do."

However, other organisations representing gay men and lesbians reacted with outrage about the GLA tactics.

Glen de Swardt, clinical manager of the Triangle Project, which is the oldest gay and lesbian service organisation in Africa, said: "We
decry this. This is not a methodology we would even consider. All this will do is provoke further discrimination and a backlash against an already marginalised community."

Baxter was adamant: "If the SANBS has the state-of-the art-equipment they claim to have, they should be able to detect HIV. We want all blood to be scrutinised equally."

Nuthard said that although the SANBS is the first blood-donation centre in the world to use a new blood-screening system that screens DNA, rather than the old test, which tested the antibodies for the antigen, they are still unsure about the exact time of the window period.

"The new test certainly does bring the window period down, but does not always test completely accurate."

Dr Richard Crookes, director of the SANBS, said the exclusion policy had been in effect in South Africa and internationally since 1983.

He said the policy was based on data from international medical publications that stated male sex has been proven to increase the risk of HIV transmission, including information from 2003-2004 from the respected Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA.

But the GLA said the information the SANBS is using to back up the decision is based on international statistics which are out of date. The GLA said they had conducted a study nearly two years ago which surveyed 3 000 gay men nationwide about their sexual conduct.

"Only 40 percent said they engaged in anal sex, while 70 percent engaged in oral sex," he said. "It is unfair to assume that all gay men are engaging in anal and oral sex. We are being unfairly discriminated against."

Crookes said the question of whether a man cannot donate blood does not have to do with whether or not he is gay. "It's not about the term gay. It is about whether men are having sex with other men and engaging in risky sexual behaviour."

Crookes confirmed that the South African data is 10 years old, but added that until new research had been done, "we have to presume that international data is similar. We can't assume local prevalence rates are higher or lower. "We can't put patients at risk based upon an assumption".

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