Helen Kennedy, executive director of the LGBTQ advocacy group Egale Canada, welcomed the decision and the end to a 'discriminatory' policy. But advocates and medical experts argued this was an outdated and stigmatizing assumption that did not reflect current risk factors. The prior rationale for the bans was that men who have sex with men had higher prevalence of the human immunodeficiency virus. The government gradually whittled down the required abstinence periods to five years, three years, and - starting in 2019 - three months. This follows an evolution of policy from a lifetime ban on blood donations, imposed in the mid-1980s, from men who had engaged in sex with men since 1977. 'Today's authorization is a significant milestone toward a more inclusive blood donation system nationwide, and builds on progress in scientific evidence made in recent years,' Health Canada said in a statement. The change is expected to take effect by Sept.
