Global News published this video item, entitled “A look at Canada’s limits on blood donation from gay men and what’s next” – below is their description.
Gay men and those who identify as men who have sex with men (MSM) were barred from donating blood or plasma in Canada starting in the 1980s after what was known as the “tainted blood scandal.”
Since then, Canadian Blood Services has slowly been changing the ban, requiring this group of men to at first abstain from sex for up to five years, but now up to three months.
Sean Previl takes a look at the history of the ban and what could be next.
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. It extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres (3.85 million square miles), making it the world’s second-largest country by total area.
Its southern and western border with the United States, stretching 8,891 kilometres (5,525 mi), is the world’s longest bi-national land border. Canada’s capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Various Indigenous peoples inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years before European colonization. The Canada Act 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British Parliament. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in the Westminster tradition, with a monarch and a prime minister who serves as the chair of the Cabinet and head of government.
As a highly developed country, Canada has the seventeenth-highest nominal per-capita income globally as well as the thirteenth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index. Its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks.