Peter Marks is the director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Canadian Blood Services is taking the first steps to allowing gay and bisexual men who have sex with men which it calls the gbMSM community to donate blood plasma, which is starting in two. have the disease, according to the CDC.ĭr. Still, as of 2014, 636,000 Americans had died from AIDS. Since 2000, there have been only 4 confirmed cases in the U.S. Then, as testing methods improved, the numbers dropped to the single digits per year. (Photo by Gabriele Holtermann) The New York Blood Center (NYBC) is giving blood donors the chance to get. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there were more than 9,000 transfusion-related HIV transmissions between 1981 ad 1985. Queens residents donate blood at the Mets semi-annual Fan Blood Drive on Jan. Today, the odds of getting an HIV infection through a blood transfusion are one in 1.5 million, less likely than being struck by lightning. Mets fans and all New Yorkers alike can donate at any one of the five blood drive locations in Queens, which will be set up in Bayside, Elmhurst, Glendale and Astoria. One test checks for the direct presence of HIV genetic material and the other looks for antibodies produced by the immune system to fight HIV. Typically, all blood donations are screened for HIV twice. Today, blood banks screen for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, with an acucracy rate of 99.99%, according to the FDA. But the New York Blood Center says it can’t implement those changes until early. Since then, advancements in testing technology have greatly improved. The FDA on April 2nd relaxed its restrictions on gay and bisexual men donating blood after a decades-long ban.
The policy dates back to 1982, when a abby was infected with AIDS through a blood transfusion given at the University of California San Francisco hospital Shortly after, the FDA, which regulates the nation's blood supply, instituted a lifetime ban on blood donations from all men who admitted having sex with other men. Until recently, the ban was even stricter.