The Handsell

gaywrites:

Another country ahead of us on this one! 

In a quiet but significant move, a procedural change went into effect on December 25 in Mexico lifting a ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men. This follows similar moves from the United Kingdom and China recently, while the United States continues to uphold its 29-year-old ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men.

Andrés Duque reports the old policy explicitly banned gay and bisexual men from donating blood due to their “practices” and “increased probability of acquiring HIV or hepatitis infection.” The new norm eliminates this carte-blanche ban on blood from gay and bisexual men, instead banning donations from people with HIV or hepatitis and their partners who engage in “risky sexual practices” regardless of sexual orientation, according toBlabbeando.

Duque reports that those “risky sexual practices” are defined in the new regulations as any that may include “contact or exchange of blood, sexual secretions or other bodily secretions between someone who might have a transmittable disease and areas of another person’s body through which an infectious agent might be able to penetrate.”

Congratulations are in order for those in Mexico who helped make this happen. America, we got some ‘splaining to do.