Gay Men Can Now Donate Blood In Israel
Image by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
JERUSALEM (JTA) — In a policy change, gay men will be allowed to freely donate blood in Israel.
Last year, Israel’s Health Ministry announced that gay men would be able to donate blood provided that a year had passed since their last sexual encounter with a man, which was challenged by gay rights groups in Israel.
Under the new procedure, the blood will be checked for certain infectous diseases at the time of donation, and then frozen for four months and checked again in a special double testing system.
The new system was announced on Wednesday by the Health Ministry and Magen David Adom.
Knesset law maker Meirav Ben-Ari of the Kulanu Party, worked together with the Israel Aids Task Force and Israel’s LGBT Task Force to craft the new testing system, which is being implemented for a two-year trial period.
The United States requires gay male blood donors to have been celibate for 12 months before donating.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
