Galway campaigner wins long battle on blood donation

A Galway man who has fought a very long battle to enable gay and bisexual men can donate blood has cautiously welcomed a signalled change in policy by Government.

The Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, announced plans recently that will enable men who have sex with men (MSM) to donate blood based on individualised risk assessment – a process that will apply to all donors similar to that used in the UK.

Tomás Heneghan from Castlegar first came to public attention in 2016 when he took a High Court case against the state seeking to lift a lifelong ban on gay men donating blood – a policy that came about during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

Scientific evidence has long since shown that there is no basis for a continued veto on gay or bisexual men’s blood, and in 2017 a twelve-month gap since having sex – known as a deferral and applying to MSM only – was introduced ending the lifetime ban.

However, Minister Donnelly has said from March 2022, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) will reduce this to four months – an interim measure ahead of the full removal of restrictions on MSM.

For Mr Heneghan – who currently travels to the UK to donate blood – this was welcome news provided it wasn’t put on the long finger by IBTS, not only for MSM who want to donate blood but for confidence in the safety of blood donations overall.

“There’s always been two parts to this – on one side, personally it often excluded me from being able to donate blood in Ireland but on the flip side, there was always the potential for someone to donate unsafe blood.

“A man could have sex with a woman and neither might know if they were infected. There was nothing to stop them going the next morning and making a donation – this new system will take account of that risk across the board,” said the 30-year-old who is now based in Dublin.

When the new system is introduced – which is understood to be taking time because of a move to a more paperless approach by the IBTS – all potential donors will be asked if they have had sex with a new partner in the three months previous to donating.

If so, this will lead to a further set of questions to establish how safe it is for them to donate.

This methodology has been in use in the across the water since last year and with ongoing shortages of blood in Ireland, around 500 units have had to be imported from the UK to meet demand in the last 12 months.

“Considering that all came at a time when this system was in place in the UK, it was difficult to see why Ireland was different,” said Mr Heneghan, adding that while this will increase the number of people eligible to donate, it was unlikely to make up the current shortfall.

“I will fully acknowledge the fact that gay and bisexual men make up a relatively small proportion of the population and it may not lead to a huge boom in new repeat donors, if you get one new gay man on the system, that could be three or four donations per year,” he said.

There had been widespread political support for a change in policy in recent years, said Mr Heneghan, but he believed ongoing resistance within the blood service slowed down change.

“While the Minister for Health had the power to change the policy, they tended to defer to the blood service. Perhaps that was just because they didn’t want to get involved in the detail and preferred to leave it up to the IBTS, but I would have been critical that there wasn’t more done at a political level and that various ministers didn’t intervene,” he said.

True success will be the day he can donate here in Ireland, said Mr Heneghan – what will be likely be the 20th donation he’s made since his first, just a few days after he turned 18.

“It’ll be the day that I’m sitting with that form in front of me, and the questions that I’ve answered so many times before [about MSM] will no longer be there – that’ll be when it sinks in.

“I will be continuing to follow up to get the date when it’ll be in place, but at least we’ve been told it’ll be by the end of this year,” he said.