Blood donation discrimination against homosexuals ends at the beginning of 2025
Published: Friday, Sep 27th 2024, 11:00
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Blood donations may not be remunerated in Switzerland, and everyone should be allowed to donate blood. These principles will be enshrined in law from 2025. This will also put an end to discrimination against homosexuals.
On Friday, the Federal Council announced that the amendments to the Therapeutic Products Act regarding blood donation adopted by Parliament will come into force on January 1, 2025. The constitutionally guaranteed principles of non-remuneration and non-discrimination in blood donation will then be enshrined in law.
In future, people must not be excluded from donating blood on the basis of their sexual orientation, for example. Instead, the criteria for excluding someone from donating must be based on individual risk behavior and science.
The background to this is that gay and bisexual men were generally excluded from donating blood after the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic from 1988 to 2017 - regardless of their personal life situation and behavior. Currently, men are only permitted to donate blood if they have not had sex with men in the past twelve months.
The revised law also stipulates that there is no payment for donating blood in Switzerland. No blood or labile blood products may be imported for transfusion purposes for which such benefits have been granted or accepted. This puts the constitutional principle in the Therapeutic Products Act into concrete terms.
Despite fluctuations, the supply of blood products remained stable in Switzerland in 2023. The number of blood donations fell slightly by 0.6% to 263,702. The Swiss Transfusion SRC set a new record for blood stem cell transplants.
©Keystone/SDA
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