New Zealand’s blood service has announced that gay and bisexual men will be able to donate blood under the same rules as everyone else, starting May 4, 2026 C.E. The New Zealand Blood Service is replacing its blanket three-month deferral for men who have had sex with men with an individualized risk assessment — a system already in use in the U.S., France, Germany, and several other countries. The shift ends a decades-old policy that many health advocates called both discriminatory and medically outdated.
At a glance
- Individualized risk assessment: Under the new framework, all donors will be asked the same questions about recent sexual activity, regardless of their sexual orientation or the gender of their partners.
- Blood supply safety: A 2022 C.E. University of Auckland study, the Sex and Prevention of Transmission Study, found that moving to behavior-based screening would not reduce the safety of New Zealand’s blood supply.
- LGBTQ+ inclusion: Liz Gibbs, CEO of HIV/AIDS organization Burnett Foundation, said the change would expand the pool of eligible donors and help cover shortages, while ending a practice that had long excluded gay and bisexual men from giving back to their communities.
Why the old rules didn’t hold up
The previous policy barred men from donating blood within three months of sex with another man — even if they were in a long-term monogamous relationship or had used protection. Critics argued the rule targeted identity rather than actual risk, treating an entire group as inherently dangerous regardless of individual behavior.
Dr. Sarah Morley, Chief Medical Officer of the NZ Blood Service, said the old questions focused narrowly on men who have sex with men. “Rather than focusing on an individual group, we can ask the same questions, and we can manage every donor in exactly the same way,” she told The New Zealand Herald. She added that the nation’s blood supply would likely be “safer than ever” with the updated screening.
The University of Auckland research, led by Toy Scriamporn, provided the New Zealand-specific evidence the blood service needed to move forward. The service had long wanted to shift to individualized assessments but required local data before doing so.
Part of a wider shift
New Zealand’s announcement follows a nearly identical move by Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, which said earlier in April 2026 C.E. that gay and bisexual men and transgender people in long-term monogamous relationships would become eligible to donate blood or platelets under revised rules.
The U.S. made the same change in 2023 C.E., when the FDA updated its guidance to base donor eligibility on individual sexual behavior — including number of recent partners — rather than sexual orientation. France and Germany had adopted similar frameworks in the years prior.
Under behavior-based screening, donors who have had a new partner or multiple partners within a defined period are asked to wait before donating. That wait applies equally to everyone. The gender of a donor’s partner is no longer a factor.
What this means for communities and blood banks
Gibbs framed the policy change on two levels. At the practical level, it widens the pool of eligible donors at a time when blood shortages remain a real challenge for health systems. At the personal level, she said, it “gives men who have long been excluded an opportunity to give back to their community.”
Dr. Morley echoed that, calling blood donation “a difficult topic for many reasons” for men who have sex with other men — and acknowledging that the new rules mark a genuine turning point.
The New Zealand Blood Service joins a growing list of national health bodies that have concluded behavior-based screening is both more equitable and at least as safe as orientation-based restrictions. The World Health Organization has long encouraged countries to move toward risk-based donor assessment, arguing that blanket deferrals based on group identity can reduce blood supply without a corresponding safety benefit.
One unresolved question is consistency: not every country has moved at the same pace, and transgender donors in some regions still face eligibility rules that lag behind science. The global picture is improving, but it isn’t uniform yet.
Read more
For more on this story, see: LGBTQ Nation
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- U.K. cancer death rates fall to their lowest level on record
- Alzheimer’s risk cut in half by drug in landmark prevention trial
- The Good News for Humankind archive on New Zealand
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