Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 15 February 2022
641. Deputy Neasa Hourigan asked the Minister for Health the date changes were brought forward by the Irish Blood Transfusion Service relating to deferral policies for blood donations, in particular when the change to reduce the existing 12-month deferral for methylsulfonylmethane to four months will be introduced. [7456/22]
View answer642. Deputy Neasa Hourigan asked the Minister for Health the date by which the Irish Blood Transfusion Service will introduce new technology to replace the existing paper health and lifestyle questionnaire with an electronic questionnaire to be known as the self-assessment health history. [7457/22]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 641 and 642 together.
The remit of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) is to provide a safe, reliable and robust blood service to the Irish health system. A major objective of the IBTS is to ensure that it always has the necessary programmes and procedures in place to protect both the recipients and the donors of blood and blood products.
Following a review of existing donor deferral policy by an independent expert group last year, the IBTS announced a range of changes to their existing deferral policies, including those concerning Men who have Sex with Men (MSM).
The objective of these policy changes is to move towards an individual assessment process for donors, making blood donation more inclusive. As a prerequisite to this, the existing paper-based Health and Lifestyle Questionnaire (HLQ) will be replaced with an electronic Self-Assessment Health History (SAHH) questionnaire.
The IBTS have advised that they expect the first phase of these deferral policy changes to begin on March 28th of this year. This initial phase will reduce the existing 12-month deferral period for MSM to 4 months. The replacement of the HLQ with the SAHH is expected to take place in July/August of this year, with the individual assessment system to follow later in the year once the SAHH is established.
