Some military personnel still restricted from donating blood

By Shanila Kabir

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    HONOLULU (KITV) — The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced gay and bisexual men can donate blood anytime, however, there are still restrictions on some groups of people, including some military personnel.

The FDA released the ban in 2020 on those who did heavy traveling in Europe from 1980 to the early 2000s. It was put in place to limit the potential spread of Mad Cow Disease also known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

“I’ve worked now for two years to try to convince the Hawaii Blood Bank to put me back on the list and my last conversation was with the CEO of blood bank,” Dr. Todd Lewis and he told me in a phone call that they don’t have the people to do the paperwork to raise the deferment for those of us who were lifted by FDA,” said Jim Amos of Mililani.

A Retired army officer and current HPD officer, Amos said he was among the 4.4 million military personnel in Europe at that time who were restricted and are now cleared.

“There’s a lot of us military people who have rotated through Europe that live here and would love to be donating blood again. I would have expected under the conditions we’re in, we have a shortage of blood and that the blood bank would have gone out of their way to make sure we’re back on the list and they haven’t,” said Amos.

Amos added he has gone to the mainland to donate blood and had no problem. He said as a Red Cross volunteer, he was invited to California just to donate blood. While he believes the decision to allow more LGBTQ+ community members to donate blood is a great step, he said other groups of people are overlooked.

KITV4 reached out to Hawaii Blood Bank. Medical Director Dr. Todd Nishimoto responded with the following statement:

“The Blood Bank of Hawaii is updating its eligibility requirements. And as it ramps up its staffing, the Blood Bank is working hard to research each individual request for reinstatement.”

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