Health Ministry to reconsider blood donations by gay men

Newly inaugurated Health Minister Yael German (Yesh Atid) on Sunday ordered her office to reexamine the government ban on blood donations by homosexual men. A special ministerial committee will discuss the matter after Passover.

The committee will “invite health professionals related to the topic as well as the heads of the LGBT community” in order to hear both sides of the issue and provide the ministry with the tools to examine the possible changing of blood donation parameters, a statement by the ministry said.

People donating blood are asked to fill out a questionnaire with their personal information, including medical history and other details that determine whether or not their blood can be donated — such as traveling to Africa or other tropical regions.

One of the questions — included in the personal information sheet in 1983 in an attempt to reduce blood donations — asks male candidates who wish to donate whether they engaged in same-sex relations at any point since 1977.

In 2005, MK Zahava Gal-on (Meretz) wrote a letter to the Health Ministry, saying the idea of checking one’s sexual preference was “from the past” and should be stopped.

In response to Gal-on’s petition, Health Ministry director general Professor Avi Yisraeli explained it was his ministry’s job “to minimize the dangers posed by using blood that could cause serious health damage.” At the time, Yisraeli also revealed that both Magen David Adom and ministerial researches suggested that between one third and half of Israeli AIDS carriers were homosexual, and the question was left in place.