The Ministry of Health and Welfare is planning to ease a ban on blood donations by gay men by May at the earliest, allowing them to donate blood five years after their last sexual contact with another man.
Current regulations, which have been enforced for 28 years, impose a lifetime ban on blood donations by men who have had sexual encounters with other men.
However, many countries have abolished such lifelong prohibitions, including the US government, which overturned its 30-year ban on donations by gay men in 2015, instead instituting a 12-month deferral period.
Calling the policy discriminatory, a petition for the removal of the ban was submitted to the government-funded online public policy platform last year, and the ministry held an advisory committee meeting in September last year to discuss the issue.
Committee members suggested that as HIV testing has greatly improved, Taiwan can follow the examples of other countries by setting a deferral period and observing the consequences, Food and Drug Administration medicinal products division deputy chief Chi Jo-feng (祁若鳳) said yesterday.
As the Centers for Disease Control has also suggested setting a deferral period, the ministry is considering lifting the ban and setting the deferral period at five years.
The proposed amendment is still being reviewed and might be announced late next month, with the new policy taking effect in May at the earliest, if there are no strong objections to the proposal.
The proposal also includes a temporary blood donation ban on people who have visited areas where the Zika virus has spread, have been infected by the virus or have had sexual contact with a person infected by the virus.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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