OTTAWA — Gay men will be able to donate blood after abstaining from sex with other men for one year. The Canadian Blood Services (CBS) and Héma-Québec have confirmed that, as first reported by The Huffington Post Canada, Health Canada has accepted their proposal to drop the blood donation deferral period from five years to one year. The change will take effect across the country on Aug. 15. "This is an exciting, incremental step forward in updating our blood donation criteria based on the latest scientific evidence," Dr. Graham Sher, chief executive officer, Canadian Blood Services said in a press release.

The CBS said it is exploring the possibility of moving toward behaviour-based screening and working with researchers, the LGBTQ community, patient groups and other stakeholders to determine how to gather the scientific evidence required to determine future changes to the eligibility criteria. "Our first priority continues to be safety, as patients bear 100 per cent of the risk associated with changes to our eligibility criteria," the agency said. The decision doesn't go as far as the Liberals' campaign commitment to end the ban, but the federal government says it will fund research to see if the deferral period can be further reduced or dropped completely. 'Step in the right direction' "This is a step in the right direction, [but] we're not there yet," said a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the matter. After the Orlando massacre, in which 49 people were killed in a gay night club, activists raised concerns that gay men, the community hardest hit, weren't eligible to donate blood to the victims. Michael Bach, founder and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion, has been leading a campaign to have the deferral period lifted completely. He says it's discriminatory and not based on current science. "I as a gay man who is married and have been in a monogamous relationship for seven years, I cannot donate blood today," he told The Canadian Press. Kristopher Wells, director of the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies at the University of Alberta, told Vancouver's News 1130 the current ban on gay men donating blood only continues to "perpetuate harmful and hurtful stereotypes and the kind of stereotypes that can lead to prejudice, discrimination, and violence in our society."

Supporters of the victims of the recent mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub attend a vigil at Lake Eola Park, Sunday, June 19, 2016, Orlando, Fla. (Photo: John Raoux/AP) As the regulator, Health Canada cannot reduce the independent blood agencies' recommendation, from one year to six months for example. Health Minister Jane Philpott can only approve or reject their application. "We respect their independence, but, we are saying, if they are making decisions based on the science, and perhaps a gap in the science is the reason for things moving at a slower pace, maybe we can, as a research funder, help with that," the government official said. Health Canada has discussed with the CBS and Héma-Québec making all of its policies behaviour-based and gender-neutral — something the agencies are already committed to doing. Health Canada is interested in funding a conference of international blood agencies to share best practices. The government is also offering to fund research on: experiences in other jurisdictions;

how questionnaires and screening practices can be re-designed;

new technological advances around screening for blood borne pathogens; "It's fairly open-ended at this point, to be determined in terms of what can be most helpful," the official said. "We are hopeful that things will continue to move in the right direction, as the science indicates that it should happen, but also not any slower than that," he added. "This isn't something that we want to see on the backburner." Liberals said ban 'ignores scientific evidence' During the 2015 election, the Liberals' promised to end the gay blood donation ban. "It's a ban that ignores scientific evidence, and it needs to end," the party said, noting that the five-year ban on sexually active gay men ignores safe and monogamous relationships. In March, CBS and Héma-Québec filed a proposal to reduce the deferral period from five years to one year, bringing Canada into line with the standard in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Netherlands. "We thought that moving to a one-year deferral period would be a reasonable next step," said Dr. Mindy Goldman, medical director of donor and clinical services at CBS, noting the agency's testing had improved tremendously in detecting evidence of HIV and other potentially deadly transmissible pathogens in blood donations.