SC notice to Centre on PIL against exclusion of transgenders from being blood donors

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 5

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the government on a PIL against blanket ban on transgender persons and female sex workers donating blood.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde asked the Centre, the National Blood Transfusion Council (NBTC) and the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to respond to the PIL challenging the 2017 guidelines excluding transgenders, men having sex with men and female sex workers from being blood donors.

“The exclusion of transgender persons, men having sex with men and female sex workers from being blood donors and permanently prohibiting them from donating blood solely on the basis of their gender identity and sexual orientation is completely arbitrary, unreasonable and discriminatory and also unscientific,” read the petition filed by a transgender activist from Manipur.

Transgender persons, gay and bisexual men who have been requesting to donate blood during the pandemic when their community and family members needed blood for emergency medical treatment were refused due to the “permanent deferral under the impugned guidelines,” the petitioner contended.

The PIL submitted that the guidelines are “stigmatising” as they are neither based on how HIV transmissions actually works nor are they based on actual risk involved in specific activities but are based only on the identities of donors.

The petitioner urged the top court to quash the clause of general criteria under blood donor selection criteria of the guidelines for blood donor selection and blood donor referral, 2017, to the extent it permanently defers transgenders, men having sex with men and female sex workers from being blood donors on account of being at risk of HIV infection.

All blood units collected from donors are tested for infectious diseases including Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS and hence, permanently “excluding them from donating blood and categorizing them as high-risk only on the basis of their gender identity and sexual orientation is violative of their right to be treated equally as other blood donors,” the PIL submitted.